On the strength of a kiss—and all it implied about who I’d become—I turned fugitive on a dark blue summer night in the back of a wagon outside House Laisira. As one of the Stone Moon empire's Claws it had been my job to investigate Laisira for possible crimes, and in the course of those duties I'd discovered House Laisira was smuggling its members to the dissident Jokka on the plains.

By that time, I'd already been struggling with my conscience. I'd spent two months working Laisira's fields, loading its wagons and following its principals nose-to-tail, and those two months had changed me. By the time I'd discovered their crimes I was already one of them... but I didn't know it, and they certainly didn't. To protect themselves from discovery they'd attacked me, and there I would certainly have died had Hesa not intervened: Hesa, one half of the pair I'd been sent to investigate, the neuter half, the eperu we'd been sure was indulging in perversities with its Head of Household, Darsi Laisira-emodo. I'd never found evidence of their unlawful relationship because Hesa was not in Darsi's bed. Hesa was doing something altogether worse: it was running House Laisira. Since eperu could not by law run Households, its sin was... extreme.

But none of that, none of it mattered at all as it rested its brow against mine in the dark of the wagon. Against the canvas walls, backlit Jokku silhouettes rushed hither and yon, finishing preparations for their escape. And instead of finding some way of reporting them to the Stone Moon empire I was lying on the wagon floor, reeling from the terrible implication of my decision—that among my many other sins, I had fallen in love, unnaturally, perversely and very, very completely with Hesa.

The kiss was inevitable.

It was also magnificent.

Hesa could kiss—how Hesa could kiss! It slipped its curled tongue between my fangs and unrolled it against the roof of my mouth, caressing, and I shook under the hand resting so softly on my shoulder. When it withdrew every part of me felt alive, and this... this was what had drawn me to Hesa from the very beginning, the ferocity of its passions, the way it made me feel them too. I curled my hand into its bright red curls and made a fist among them, and the noise the eperu made....

I lunged up to kiss it again and hissed as the sudden movement broke open the thin clots over the rips my attackers had made in my chest. Hesa caught me by the shoulders, alarmed.

"Pathen—gods, don't move. Stay." It touched my mouth with its fingers. "I'll fetch something to bind them."

It left then, its stride swift, disturbing the expensive silk of its gown. From there it stepped off the back of the wagon from which it had thrown my uniform tunic with such prejudice, the wood creaking beneath the shifting weight. I lay back down with my eyes closed and rested one hand over the rents. They were clotting again but the slices were long and in a bad place, at the bottom of my chest and over my abdomen, where any movement would open them again. We bleed a great deal, though our wounds will clot quickly if allowed. I concentrated on allowing them, then. I found I very much didn't want to die despite the uncertainty of the life before me.

Fleeing the Stone Moon? I didn't think it possible. But if anyone could bring off such a thing, Hesa could. Hesa had a hand for business, for organization—and apparently, for secrecy—that made everything seem possible.

The wagon creaked again and then I heard the gown hissing against the floorboards. Hesa crouched alongside me and slid its arm around my back, helping me up far enough to get a bandage around my ribcage. One length only; the eperu pressed wads of folded padding to the slices, tying the bandage to hold them in place.

"There," it said, soft, resting a hand on my collarbones. "That should hold you. Pathen... Pathen, we have a great deal to talk about, and none of it can be done until these wagons are moving—"

"Go," I said, and drew in a breath to steady my voice. "Go to the work, Laisira."

It smiled and lapped at my mouth once, stealing that breath. "I'll be back."

I lost some time then, I think. I remember watching the hurried silhouettes against the canvas wall, black against flickering pale red, orange. Heard the sound of crates being shoved over the ground, the groan of wagons settling beneath weight, the whispers and murmurs of Jokka as they worked. I could have wished to smell something other than my own blood, but the summer night was still, without even a breeze to disturb the hollow space beneath the wagon's fabric roof.

And then my wagon shuddered and began to roll forth. I lifted my head as Hesa jumped onto the back of it and ducked inside.

"That took longer than I wanted," it said, settling alongside me with a sigh. "Even without having to be quite so covert. You were the only one we were concerned about catching us."

"Longer than you wanted?" I said. "It's barely been a quarter of an hour, maybe?"

"Two," it said, catching my hand up in its.  "It's been a little over two hours, Pathen." It touched my cheek with the backs of its fingers, then my chest and arm. "You're not warm, so I don't think you took too ill from your knife."

"Just weak," I said. "Thirsty."

"That I can remedy," it said.

"And not... with honey," I said, thinking of how I'd uncovered Laisira's plans.

It laughed, that low rich laugh I'd found so compelling when I'd first heard it. "Not honey, I promise."

I put my head back down. When it returned with the cup it offered me, I said, "I'm not sure wine is... an improvement."

"I'm not sure either," Hesa admitted. "But the water is in the other wagons."

"Help me—?"

It looked behind it, then rose and dragged one of the crates over until it was flush against the wagon wall, closer to me. Then the eperu sat with its back to it and propped me up against its side. I drank from the cup... drank and drank until there was nothing left but a peach-colored gleam on the bottom, and then rested my spinning head against its. The eperu wrapped its arms around my shoulders and held me as the wagon rolled on: smooth, so smooth that I knew we were moving only by the sound of the rikka claws, scraping at a quick trot.

"We're going north?" I said, puzzled.

"As scheduled," Hesa said. "Down the road to het Noidla, by way of het Nekelmi. Sometime tomorrow night we'll trade off drivers with Jokka awaiting us in hiding near the road. They'll take over and keep the caravan on schedule all the way to het Noidla while we continue on foot. Westward, toward the plains."

"Clever," I murmured. "And these strangers?"

"Fellow dissidents," Hesa said after a hesitation. "From het Nekelmi. We have... an agreement."

"An agreement to help each other fool the empire?" I said, astonished.

"Yes," it said. "They are not the only ones. There are discontented Jokka in hets Narel and Serean, too. Though our contacts south are limited."

I looked at it, ears splayed. "And you need this truedark kingdom, why? If half the empire's already plotting behind the emperor's back?"

Hesa grimaced. "You make it sound as if there are so many of us, Pathen... but there aren't. Even if all the malcontents I know of banded together we couldn't take on the Claws of the empire. It's too dangerous for most Jokka to turn unease into revolution. It was almost too dangerous for us."

"But you did it anyway," I said softly.

"Yes," it said. "I knew from the moment ke Jurenel died that I wanted to win us free of the Stone Moon. I wasn't sure if I could, though. And... only half the House has gone ahead of us. We're not safe yet."

I studied its face in the dim light: we were far, far away from the firebowls of the House and now only the small lamps on the driver's seats illumined us at all, a wan glow by the time it reached the back of the wagon. "Why?" When it began to speak, I lifted a hand. "Not the reasons you gave before. I know those are true. But... what was it? That made you make the decision. There was something."

"Of course there was," it said. "And you know what it is. Shall I tell you, or will you admit it?"

I fell silent. I didn't have to be told.

Gently, Hesa touched my chin, bringing my attention back. "You know."

"Yes," I said, low. "Of course I do. Roika does not forgive unnatural eperu."

"No," Hesa said. "And he tortured two innocents merely for caring for one another. To death. Were you there, Pathen? Did you see it?"

"No," I said. "I wasn't a Claw then and I never attended the public punishments."

"I went," Hesa said. "I saw."

I frowned. "How? You were eperu. You would have had to have a permit to be freed from your duties for the day. You would have been noticed...."

"Yes," it said, bitterly. "Eperu are not supposed to have free time under the Stone Moon. I know, Pathen. But Jurenel sent an emodo with me, someone to explain that my witness was intended as education for House Laisira's pefna-eperu, so that I could tell the other eperu I commanded on the House's behalf why they should never, ever fornicate with their betters."

"We're not—"

"—our betters," Hesa said. "And yet, the emodo are the only of the three sexes to earn any money, make legal agreements, have leisure, have freedom... such as is left beneath the yoke of the Stone Moon. What shall I call them, then? They were our masters." It sighed. "I couldn't live like that, Pathen. And gods, I could not leave the House beneath the empire after seeing what those two endured on the dais."

I remembered the scandal that had seen those two Jokka tortured for fornication, an emodo and an eperu caught having an affair. Love is not supposed to cross sexes and what had been a cultural taboo before the Stone Moon had become law once Roika took command, for he had some prejudice against eperu, or so it seemed to me. Perhaps I was not the best judge of such matters, however, since I apparently had been nursing the seeds of perversity myself.

Nevertheless, those lovers, when caught, had been subjected to months of public mortifications. It had been the worst such punishment het Kabbanil had ever seen and talk of it had never quite died in the years that followed. Indeed, that incident had ushered me into the ranks of the Stone Moon's Claws, for afterward the Head of the Claws, ke Jushet, had decided the Houses needed more individual oversight and hired enough emodo to undertake that endeavor. Now that I thought of it, I, no less than Hesa, had made a decision based on the destruction of those lovers: that if we were all to be prey before the empire, I would prefer to be one of the hunters.

"You, too," Hesa guessed when my silence drew on too long.

"Yes," I said slowly. "Yes. For all of us, I think. Perhaps even the emperor."

"Certainly for his empire," Hesa said. "He drew blood that day. Before, it was easy to ignore his fangs." It sighed and rested its head against mine and I felt the fatigue it would never admit to aloud. I chanced a touch along its arm, feeling muscle beneath smooth skin. When I paused, it murmured against my cheek, "More...? Please?"

"Hesa," I began.

"If you worry about the driver," it said, eyes still closed—I could feel the lashes against my cheek—"don't. He can't hear us. We're too far back. And..." A smile then. "He's very good at not listening anyway."

"Someone you know well?" I chanced asking with... jealousy? A hint of it, at least. Gods help me.

"You could say," it said, amused, tired. "You do too."

"I—" I stopped then growled, "Don't tell me Darsi is driving this wagon?"

"He's quite good with the rikka," it said, and did a poor job of hiding its amusement.

"Good with the rikka and nothing else!"

"Now, Pathen," it said, and it was no longer bothering to hide the laugh. "Don't be harsh. He did as well as he could with what Jurenel gave us."

"He did so well I knew the moment I saw him that something was wrong!" I exclaimed.

"Only because you have a nose for trouble," Hesa replied, a touch more seriously. "We didn't count on you being quite so... incisive."

"Incisive!" I said. "It did not take great insight to see Darsi couldn't run a House if you twinned him and dumped Jurenel's departed spirit into the extra body!"

Now it started laughing in earnest against my hair, shoulders shaking.

"You think I'm making a joke," I said, disgruntled.

"No," it said, straightening enough to pull its hair back from its face and rub its eyes. "No, I know you're not. And you're right. He's no good for running a House, but he was the only one willing to volunteer to distract you."

"And what made you think he would make a good distraction?" I said.

"Because," Hesa said, glancing at me. "Of all Laisira's emodo, he's considered the most attractive."

I stared at it, agape. And then, finding my tongue, "You chose Darsi because you thought I'd want him?"

"Yes," Hesa said. "Laisira is a House full of artists, Pathen. Artists and craftsmen. Most of them are withdrawn, not exactly the social sorts, and none of them are actors. Darsi's not much of one either, at that. We didn't exactly have many choices, so we went with what we had and hoped that you would find Darsi enticing enough to want to show him kindness in return for—"

I pressed my fingers to its mouth to silence it, aghast. When it stopped, I whispered, "You thought I would take a bribe? In the form of sexual favors?"

It met my eyes and said against my skin, "Other Claws have." When I didn't answer, it added, soft, "And in a way, our strategy worked. It's just that it wasn't Darsi you wanted."

I reared back, ignoring the fresh pain at the rents, and the fury in my eyes made Hesa flatten its ears... but it, it did not move away. And in the end, that was why I'd found it so enticing, wasn't it? It didn't let fear cow it. Not fear of me, not fear of the empire.

"If you'd been in Darsi's bed," I began.

"...you would have turned us in?" Hesa asked. "To be tortured for months on the dais?"

I grimaced. "No. No! But I didn't do it to get you into my bed!"

"No?" Hesa asked, holding itself very still.

"No!" I said. "Never! To compel you? To rape you? In return for my silence? What do you take me for? A—" I stopped.

"...Claw of the empire?" Hesa finished.

I stared at it, horror-stricken.

Hesa gathered one of my hands in its and said, "Pathen. We didn't know you then. We do now.  All Laisira knows that you would never have used Darsi for your own purposes. You are an honorable Jokkad, as much as is—was—possible to you within the empire. But it was the only plan we had at the time. We had no choice."

"Jurenel should have found someone to train as a successor," I said bitterly. "I would never have been forced to shadow you if he'd only done his duty."

"Pathen... he did." I looked at the eperu and it said, "Me. He trained me as his successor."

"Jurenel?" I whispered. "Jurenel, the devout? Trained an eperu to take over as Head of Household? He wasn't that stupid. He knew you would never be allowed. That it was against the law. Against nature! What was he thinking!"

"That I could do the work better than anyone else in the House," Hesa said. "So why would he hire someone else to do so? He didn't care what happened after he died. As far as he was concerned, he'd left the House in the most competent hands he could find. That we would have to figure out some form of subterfuge to make it work didn't matter to him." It sighed. "I wish we'd thought of it sooner. But even I didn't realize what he was doing until he told me on his deathbed that he had been teaching me all the workings of the business for a reason, for this reason. I assumed it was so that I could pass the knowledge on if something happened to the Head of Household."

These revelations left me reeling; on top of the blood loss and the wine, I thought I would faint, if I wasn't careful, and wouldn't that be ridiculous. It occurred to me then to ask: "All that we did together... were you..."

"Lying to you?" it said, looking up at me sharply. "To distract you?"

"Yes," I whispered.

It touched my lips with two fingers, slid that hand over to cup my cheek. "Pathen. Gods. No. Even if I'd thought to suspect a Claw of that sort of perversion... to draw your eye to me on purpose? When I was what Laisira was trying to hide?"

I began to relax. "Would have been ill-advised."

"Yes," it said. "And... I was afraid. I put you to work in the hopes that if I was strong, if I faced you and showed no fear, you would back down."

I splayed an ear. "It worked."

"It worked," it agreed. "And the more time we spent together..." It trailed off and took its hand back, to cover its face, rub it slowly, showing its exhaustion. "I should have stopped it. I thought about stopping it often enough. I was born emodo; I remembered what it was like to fall in love. I knew I had no business doing it again now that I was eperu." Its expression when it raised its face again... eyes like wounds, more vulnerable than I'd ever seen it. "No, Pathen. Nothing I feel for you is a lie."

"Why?" I asked, softer, and touched it beneath one eye. "Why this look?"

"Did you see?" it whispered. "No, of course, you didn't. You weren't there. The eperu on the dais. That eperu wished with all its spirit that it had never revealed its love and doomed its beloved. Toward the end that was my only thought every time I saw you. That I would be responsible for your torture if I didn't put an end to it, and yet I couldn't do it."

For a moment I couldn't speak. Then I drew it into my arms, one hand on the back of its head, the other over its spine at the waist. "We're no longer beneath the Stone Moon, Hesa."

"No," it said. "But Ke Bakil is not free of it yet. And they are not the only ones with opinions about what we feel."

I frowned, drew back to look at it, saw only the slope of its brow and one errant red curl. But it felt my movement and said against my shoulder, "Eperu do not hold with love, Pathen. Nor with passion of any kind. They have their own laws. Their own society, even, that they do not discuss with breeders. Many of them don't even know that we are... capable... of physical reciprocation."

So many questions came to mind then, enough that I couldn't order them to speak them. But Hesa flattened its ears and leaned back. "Not now. You won't have long to sleep before we need to start hiking... you need rest."

All I ended up saying, then, was, "Stay with me?"

"Yes," it said. And smiled a little. "So long as you hold me. I have missed touch."

"Don't eperu touch?" I asked, soft.

"Not the way you touch me," it answered.

I gathered it close enough to smell the honey-sunlight scent of its hair, to feel the cool smooth silk of its gown... cool, until my body warmed it. We lay together on the floor of the wagon and while it was not among the most comfortable beds we were to know together, Hesa and I, it remains bright in my memory, and special, because it was the first.

I did sleep, and if my dreams echoed with the click of rikka claws and the low hum of wheels on Roika's stone roads, they never developed beyond that. I needed the healing too badly, and the wine kept me under. What woke me finally was the realization that I was colder than I had been, and when I opened my eyes I found Hesa had gone. Sitting up, I looked to the front of the wagon and saw the eperu leaning through the opening to the driver's bench; it had changed out of the festival gown and into the trousers and vest I was more accustomed to seeing it wear. From the dark gold tone of the canvas walls, it was late afternoon, so I had slept through the night and most of the day as well. I tried flexing my torso—the cuts ached badly but they didn't break. Someone, I saw, had changed the padding over them. I had slept through that too? I grimaced and stood, careful of my footing.

Hesa glanced at me as I joined it, sitting on one of the crates stacked against the front wall of the caravan.

"How soon?" I asked.

"Tomorrow night," Hesa said.

"Is that Pathen?" came a voice from the bench. And gods help me, it was in fact Darsi, whom I'd scourged in my thoughts so frequently for his fecklessness.

"It is," Hesa said, and studied me. "How do you feel?"

"I could hike," I said. "Especially if it meant the difference between living and dying." I smiled faintly. "I am hungry though. And thirsty. And in need of clothes. Did you really leave my tunic on the ground outside Laisira?"

"No," Hesa said. "I had one of the eperu drop it in one of the fields. I thought that would explain your absence to your superiors without leading them back to Laisira before the fetes ended... since I'm sure they would have sought you out before then."

I had not thought what my superior Suker would do when I didn't report for work tomorrow. Technically the Claws were supposed to have the holidays off but I was still being punished for failing to uncover Rapuñal's transgressions and Suker had been expecting me to put in extra time to demonstrate my zeal to the empire.

Suker—he had not been a friend. We were all very careful about becoming too attached to other Claws, given the sort of work we did and the amount of oversight we had. But he had watched my back, and at times we'd found solace in mordant humor that would have been taken amiss by our superiors. I'd thought of him as kin and felt a pang imagining his reaction on receiving my bloodied uniform tunic.

"That's probably for the best," I said at last.

"Come," Hesa said, taking me by the elbow. "We'll find you something to wear. And then you should marshal your strength while you can."

"Someone should spell Darsi," I said.

"I did," it said. "While you were unconscious. He's fine."

So I let it lead me back into the wagon while it opened a new crate and began sorting through its contents.

"You brought clothes on your flight?" I said, puzzled.

"We are not going to a het," Hesa said, distracted... considering the shirt it held up to judge perhaps whether it would fit me. I was broader through the shoulders than it or Darsi. "There is little established industry on the plains. Certainly no weavers. I brought enough to see us through a season. Hopefully by then things will have changed."

"No industry," I said.

"No," Hesa said. "They are proud of the community they've made while admitting it's only barely self-sustaining. Not unexpected when one considers it is a group made of refugees." It offered me a vest. "Try this. Your pants, I fear, you should keep, though I hate the thought of you dressed in anything the empire made."

"Without the tunic they're inoffensive enough," I said. "If they bother you, have one of your emodo paint them with something. Flowers. Rays of sunlight."

It glanced at me, amused. "Pretty lithreked wings?"

I made a face. "Anything within reason."

It laughed. "Gods willing, things will change and the weavers will have a proper place to work again."

I tried the vest and handed it back when it proved too narrow through the back. "Hesa. You've met someone from this truedark kingdom?"

"Both of us have," it said. "Darsi and I. Several people, while arranging for our escape." It offered me a new vest and then sat across from me while I pulled it on. "Their leader was an eperu, a former jarana to an anadi with whom it fell in love."

I looked up at it sharply.

"They tell me other things," Hesa said. "That this anadi had dreams of freedom, that she founded a House in het Narel that she used to save other anadi from the harness, that she and Roika were at odds... and all that, no doubt, is true. But to me, the deepest seed of this schism lies in that relationship." It sighed, resting its hands on its knees. "That is the crux of our struggle. How can we live together when nature drives us apart? Roika would have us resign ourselves to those differences and build a society that makes it easier for us to deal with the cruelties of our bodies. Thenet would have us turn our lives into a constant fight against our natures, exposing ourselves to pain and grief that we might acknowledge each other as people no matter the cost."

I hesitated, fingers loose on the buttons. "You sound as if you approve of neither."

"I don't," it said. "I don't think either will work. And I think both Roika and Thenet know it. But what is the middle way, Pathen?"

I paused, studying it and disliking the resignation I saw in its body, though the eperu remained composed enough. "If you don't believe in either," I said at last, "why are we choosing Thenet?"

"Because," Hesa said with a crooked smile, "Thenet at least will leave us alone to work on the answers. Roika can't afford to let anyone disagree with him when he has all of Ke Bakil to run."

"You make it sound like some problem of House management," I said, wry.

"It is, in a way," Hesa said. It stood and took over buttoning the vest from me, close enough that I could smell its hair. "A small House can listen to all its members and make changes based on their suggestions far more easily than a large one. Our problem—" It smoothed the fabric from the seams once it had finished fastening it. "—is that for the first time we are undertaking the management of our society as a whole and discovering that very little of it works and we are heading toward ruin." It frowned at my shoulders and tugged at the hem there. "This is too small for you also. If I'd known I would be dressing you—"

I caught its hand and kissed the palm. "It's summer. I don't need a shirt."

Hesa's ears flipped back at the touch and it shivered. I rested a hand on its back and said into one of those ears, "You have barely fled the Stone Moon, pefna Hesa, and you are already trying to manage Ke Bakil."

It huffed a soft laugh against my chest. "I can't help myself. It's what I do."

"And you are amazing at it," I said. "Perhaps we should tumble Roika from his seat and put you in his place. You'd have everything solved within a week."

It snorted then. "Management alone does not run a House, Pathen, or the pefna would be the Head of Household. A House needs vision as well as support. Give me a vision and I can make it work. But I cannot see the path ahead of us. For that we will need imagination."

"Or a miracle," I said, thinking of the problems that beset us, and from its sigh it agreed. It even allowed itself to lean against me, and that was both more precious than metal and more foreboding than knives.

"Rest," it said.

"Yes, pefna," I murmured, because I knew it would smile. And in truth when I settled back down again I was glad to, and slept again.

I woke to Darsi stubbing his foot on a crate and hissing a curse beneath his breath. Sitting up, I squinted at him: night had fully fallen, and I wasn't sure what time it was. At the sight of me watching, he said, "Get out while you can and use the bushes. We're pausing for truedark. The rikka won't run through it."

"Thanks," I said and rose. As I did, he added, "Pathen. You owe me an apology."

"Pardon?" I said.

"For putting me through hell," he said.

I turned to him, wondering if he was serious, and from what little I could see of his expression he was. "You want me to apologize... for doing the work for which I was hired? Would you have preferred I not do the work and be punished for it?"

"No!" he said. And then hissed again, sitting to rub his toes. "Yes. I don't know. At very least you didn't have to be so damned intimidating about it!"

"This from the emodo who'd been chosen to seduce me?" I said.

"Also not the easiest thing to manage with you looming over me all the time."

"I couldn't help myself," I said. "You kept cringing."

"Of course I did!" he hissed. "I was supposed to be seducing you!"

All my amusement drained away... and so did my anger. For I had been angry at him, for his poor management of House Laisira, for being so meek, for failing to stand up to me and making himself prey before the empire. Staring at him now I truly understood in my bones that he'd been given the task of inviting attentions he hadn't welcomed to save his House, and he'd done his best. Not only done his best, but done exactly what he should have, for had I been the sort of emodo to enjoy compelling sexual favors from the powerless his fear would have been an aphrodisiac.

"Did you think I would do it?" I asked him, quiet.

"I didn't know," Darsi said with reluctance. I could see the gleam of light on one eye past his forelock as he peered up at me in the gloom of the wagon. "You were always hard for me to read. I kept trying, though."

At last, I thought I had found something I could respect Darsi for. I wasn't sure I could have put myself forth as bait for the amorous attentions of a Jokkad who could have destroyed my House on a whim. That took a level of sacrifice I couldn't help admiring. I turned from him and headed for the back of the wagon.

And then, as usual, he had to ruin it. "Pathen. This thing with Hesa... you know it's not a good idea."

I looked over my shoulder at him and perhaps there was enough light on my face for him to know he'd made a mistake.

"I hold Hesa in high esteem and always have," he hurried on. "You won't find a more exemplary Jokkad on Ke Bakil. But you and I both know that you're inviting heartbreak and censure."

"If there's censure to be found, Darsi," I said, voice low, "it had better not be yours." And then I hopped off the back of the wagon. It wasn't until I reached the side of the road that I realized I'd threatened him; that I was perhaps too used to issuing threats. I was no longer the claw on the end of an empire's hand... what authority existed here was solely Laisira's, for I had run away with them. And yet I couldn't go back into that wagon and take it back. If Darsi wanted to make an issue of what I felt for Hesa, he had better not do it where I could reach him. The empire might no longer stand behind my threats but it had taught me how to fight.

The thought of punching Darsi was compelling. Regrettably. I put it aside and went to take care of needful things.

When I returned, the Jokka of House Laisira were already climbing back into their wagons. I leapt onto the back of mine but chose to sit on the edge instead of taking shelter inside it. As I waited, truedark fell. I had never contemplated what caravans did during truedark; I'd assumed they'd pulled to the side of the roads to wait it out, just as we were doing. Jokka do not travel during truedark. We love sight too much to risk ourselves in the uncanny hour where the darkness is too complete for our vision to work well.

In one of the wagons near me, a lamp kindled, showing silhouettes against the canvas walls. I stared in that direction, startled.

"Do you wonder that we might use a light?" Hesa said from the ground.

"No," I said honestly. "I wonder that I never thought that we might."

"Superstitions don't die quick deaths," Hesa said, pulling itself up alongside me. More silhouettes crowded into the lit wagon. "There's no reason not to use lamps during truedark except that we don't do anything during truedark and never have. So why would we need a lamp?"

"Do all caravans do this, then?" I asked.

"I don't know," Hesa said. "A few, certainly. Not all of us drive through the night, of course, but among those of us who do I've heard of a few who celebrate truedark, if they choose to stay awake for it."

"Celebrate it," I murmured.

"The darkness that veils the moon," Hesa said and moved on. "You had a fight with Darsi."

I glanced at it but couldn't see its face. "You heard?"

"I heard Darsi muttering to himself," Hesa said. "Much as he used to when you'd been frightening him over something or other. So I'm right?"

"He saw fit to warn me over you," I said, flattening my ears.

In that utter dark, its sigh was a visceral thing. I could almost feel the warmth of its throat in the air it released. "Yes, I imagine so."

"As if it's any business of his," I growled.

"Ah, but it is," Hesa said. "And no doubt he will only be the first to say something to us. If... in fact... we do anything."

I began to speak and it said—as if it could see me—"Let me finish, please. It's truedark now and the time of confidences, and we're very likely the only people not in that wagon. So let me tell you of the eperu."

I subsided and it sensed my quiet, for it exhaled.

"You know I was born emodo," Hesa said. "I Turned eperu... it was either a late first Turning or an early second, no one was ever sure. But I was old enough to have had a few relationships. Very passionate... you know how adolescents are."

"I remember," I murmured.

"You do, I'm sure," it said and groped for my hand until it found it on my knee. "I'm guessing you're my age. Early third decade?"

"Yes," I said, wishing I could see it and fascinated at how not being able to made its voice and its body-heat so intense.

"When it was certain, my being eperu," Hesa continued. "I went to stay with them in the House. You're never really taught anything formally but you absorb a great deal from being among other eperu when you're one of them. That we live to serve the breeders. That their welfare is worth our lives. And there's pride there, that we're willing to make those sacrifices. That we're capable. And pride too that we're not part of their passions. That we stand outside the cycle of making children, of love, of things eperu name breeders' fancies. And that part is definitely clear: we don't love. We don't love one another, not that way; we call one another 'cousin' as if we are family, and we are kin but we say those things to hold ourselves apart from the possibility of passion."

It was silent, though its thumb slowly stroked my fingers. As I waited for it to compose its thoughts I tried to hold in my mind the revelation that the eperu considered themselves so truly separate from the rest of us.

"The eperu born eperu are the most obdurate, of course," Hesa continued at length. "And the least cognizant of what it is to be a breeder and to harbor feelings for other Jokka. It's not that they're incapable, it's just that they've been conditioned to detachment for so long that they don't even know how to try. Those of us born other sexes or who had brief stints as them between birth and Turning, we have a sense of it. And I think the kudelith-eperu distrust us a little for that." It lifted my hand and rested its nose against my knuckles, sighing. "The truth, Pathen, is that we can love. Of course we can. We can even feel passion and the body's answer to it. The sensation's not as strong for me as it was when I was emodo, but my body works much the way it used to. And my heart, definitely. But this is against what eperu teach one another."

"But why?" I asked.

"For the same reason Roika separates the sexes," Hesa said against my fingers. "Because the eperu are too used to watching the breeders fail, Pathen. The minds of the anadi, the bodies of the emodo... if we loved you, the wisdom goes, we would go mad from grief."

I cleared my throat and said, quiet, "I'm not planning to die anytime soon."

I felt its smile against my fingers, but its voice was hesitant. "Was that an invitation?"

"A promise," I said and turned my hand in its so I could cup its chin and draw it close enough to kiss. This time when we parted it was the one breathless and there was a taste in my mouth... bitter and bright. "Don't weep," I said, gathering it to me.

"Are you sure?" it asked me, its hands on my arms trembling. "Are you sure about doing this? I can only ask so many times before you wear me down."

"Hesa," I said. And laughed, quiet. "I'm sure. Never more so." I brushed my nose against its. "If you're willing."

"Yes...!" it whispered.

"Then show me how to please you," I said, and drew it down with me.

While the Jokka of House Laisira whiled away the truedark hour in their one lit wagon, I let Hesa teach me how to make love to an eperu. In truth it was not so different from loving anyone else in any way except one: that it was Hesa, peerless, fierce and wonderful Hesa. Simply being itself was enough magic without it also having talent... which it did. I had had lovers before but I couldn't remember any of them being able to do with their bodies what Hesa could do with its fingers. Or mouth. And the sound it made beneath me when it at last found its pleasure...

...so quiet and so heartfelt...

I had been waiting all my life to hear that sound, and never knew it.

Afterward we cleaned each other and dressed again, and then it would have walked away had I not caught its wrist.

"They'll be returning any time now," it said, low. "We should—"

"—hide?" I said. "No, I don't think so." That I could see the look on its face meant that truedark had truly sped, but I was glad because I knew to continue. "Hesa. I won't touch you and then set you aside like a guilty secret. If I do this, and I plan to, I'll face the consequences of it."

It searched my face, then said, "Face them... but not accept them?"

I paused. And laughed. "You have been reading too many contracts, pefna-eperu." I didn't let it go, though it remained standing, uncertainty limned in the tremor of its body. "You heard right. I'll face the consequences of it but I won't accept them. I won't accept censure for loving you. I won't accept cruelty. And they will have to kill me before I allow them to drag either of us away to be tortured. I won't close my eyes to the difficulties but I won't lie down for injustice. And Hesa... I am in love with you. I'm afraid I was falling in love with you from the moment I saw you at ke Jurenel's funeral."

It shuddered and said, "There are worse consequences than the censure of other Jokka, Pathen. Nature itself may punish us."

"If it does, it does," I said. "That too I'll face when it comes. If... you're willing to face it with me."

It looked at our joined hands. And then reached behind itself, pulling a knife from its sash: my knife, the one that had been wrested from me by the members of House Laisira when they'd subdued me.

It offered its trust with the empire's knife, offered it with the naked metal that made plain all that we risked. I put my hand on its so that our hands were joined on the haft and tugged gently until it knelt next to me. From there I pulled it all the way into my arms, setting the knife to one side, and that kiss was better than the first and all the ones shared in truedark.

"I've missed this," it whispered.

"Then you need not miss it anymore," I said, and looped an arm around its waist.

Darsi said nothing when he found us that way, walking past us to reach the driver's bench. I was gratified to see he had some common sense after all.

I spent the following day watching het Kabbanil recede, a view made possible by Hesa's positioning its wagon last in the train. The Stone Moon had not ruled Ke Bakil all my life. I'd been born in het Kabbanil in a free society, had grown old enough to enjoy the privileges and responsibilities of an adult, owing work to House Ures. It had not been an idyllic existence, certainly, for Hesa was right: our society was collapsing and even het Kabbanil, the largest city left on the back of the World, had not been immune to the effects of crop failures and falling birth rates and the increasing burden of the mind-wounded. But I had been free. Free... and ignorant, and content in that ignorance.

When Roika arrived in het Kabbanil, he had shone the light of his Stone Moon on the problems that were destroying us as a species. After that we had neither freedom nor contentment except under his law, and beneath it we'd begun to prosper. But we prospered the way rikka did in the harness, obedient to the hand on our reins, unable to break away, forced to travel the path our master decreed and bear the load he had chosen.

The Pathen who'd been born free to House Ures would have gladly died in het Kabbanil after a long life. The Pathen who'd lived to see the empire engulf the entirety of Ke Bakil... was leaving it behind. With pain, yes. But while Roika ruled, het Kabbanil was no longer my home.

From the back of a moving wagon heading north, the city was a silhouette beneath a sky like a pottery bowl, half of it leafed in copper and the other half the glazed violet of swelling night. I think it was that sight that made me promise myself that I would return. Even knowing how unlikely the prospect... still, I promised myself. One day I would set foot in het Kabbanil again, a het Kabbanil that would no longer erect public platforms for the torture of innocents. A het Kabbanil that did not hire its own emodo to police the behavior of its citizens, did not extend them like claws ready to rend. A free het Kabbanil, capital this time of a free Ke Bakil. Surely among these truedark dissidents there was a leader who could show us the path to that future. I would find that Jokkad and bring them back from the wilderness.

And then I could go home.

I stared for a long time at that silhouette and at the shape of my promise. Until night fell for true and the wagon stopped, and Hesa came to find me.

"Come," it said. "It's time."

I watched the hand-off from the side of the road. As with everything Hesa arranged, it happened with minimal fuss. There had been Jokka waiting in the shadowed dark of the shrubs alongside the road—poor work of the empire to leave them there—and the Jokka of House Laisira slid from their drivers' benches or out of their wagons, shouldering packs; some of them were the padded wooden cylinders that sheltered new hives for nascent bee colonies, the source of Laisira's silk. Many of them carried what I thought were staves until an emodo passed me close enough to see it was one of the long-handled wooden whisks used to stir the dye vats. The strangers traded places with them, tapped the rikkas' backs with the reins, and the wagons rolled on.

We watched them go, all of us. I think we all felt the irrevocability of our actions. Until this moment, we had only been contemplating treason. Now... now we were committed.

Hesa drew in a breath, then turned to its House and said, "You know your routes and your groups. Go now. We'll see each other again at the rendezvous."

Immediately the Jokka splintered into handfuls and forged into the dark, leaving me with Hesa, Darsi, and three other Jokka I knew for weavers, having seen them at work often enough during my visits.

"We're missing a whisk," I observed.

"Our party won't need one," Hesa said. "We're the only ones mounted."

I glanced at the dark and saw what the shadows had obscured until then: tacked beasts grazing.

"The Jokka now driving our caravans used them to ride here, to wait for us," Hesa said as Darsi and the others moved toward them. "There's payment for them in the wagons. We need to get to the rendezvous point first if at all possible, so we'll ride."

"And the whisks," I said. "For obscuring tracks, I'm guessing."

"And as weapons, if necessary," Hesa said. "Though gods help us if we are forced to resort to stirring spoons for weapons. We have stone knives but not a great many. Buying enough for us all would have looked suspicious."

"Yes," I said, because I'd been a Claw and it would have caught my attention. "You thought of everything."

"I tried," Hesa said. "But I live in fear of what I may have overlooked." It looked up as Darsi rode close, pulling the last two rikka by the reins. "Ah, thank you, Darsi."

"You haven't forgotten anything," Darsi said. "You never do."

"That is always the last thing anyone says of someone who finally fails," Hesa said, pulling itself into the saddle.

I followed suit, eyeing Darsi. He didn't meet my gaze.

"How far are we expected to go tonight?" I asked as Hesa guided us into the shrouded wilderness lapping the road.

"Until truedark," it said, voice tense. "The farther we are from the road and everyone else, the safer we'll be."

For hours, then, we pressed on beneath the gathering night. The rikka didn't like it; they preferred traveling by day when they could see better. The terrain was a hindrance as well. The rikka were plainsbeasts, and the land near het Nekelmi was folded into deep hills that would become the Birthwell's mountains in the north near het Noidla. It was hard work pushing the beasts in those conditions, so we concentrated on doing so. My wounds began to ache not long into the ride but I made no complaint. Better to bleed than to die.

We didn't stop until nearly truedark and even then Hesa reined its beast in and paused to look at the sky as if trying to decide whether to continue.

"The rikka won't go any further," Darsi said.

"We have yew sap," it said.

Darsi sighed. "If you think it best."

It considered for a very long moment, then looked over its shoulder at the rest of us in what light remained. Then said, "We camp."

Someone behind me blew out a breath in relief and then everyone began to slide off the rikka and strip them. As I started on mine, I said, "Yew sap?"

"For attracting firebrights," Darsi said.

"Like in stories," I said.

"It works," he said, and I could hear his flattened ears in his tone of voice.

"It does," Hesa said, interrupting us. "But we'll save it for an emergency. We'll be up before dawn, though, so get what rest you can."

I checked the saddlebags after seeing to the rikka. There was food in one of them, of course. Nuts, seeds and dried fruit pressed into flattened honey cakes. We ate a cold meal, for there was no question of lighting a fire, and sat in a circle with the rikka on the outside so their vigilance could serve us. One by one, the Jokka with us finished their food and pulled the saddle blankets over themselves and dropped to sleep. I caught Hesa's hand. In the fading light, I saw a hint of surprise and as swiftly, gratitude.

I could see that convincing it of my sincerity would not be the work of an evening. I prayed I would be granted enough of them to succeed. Hesa slept in my arms that night, but no one learned of it, for the eperu was up and tacking our beasts before we'd risen. In this as in everything, it served the breeders' safety.

For the next few days we rode at a pace that would have punished the most practiced of riders. There was almost no talk on the journey; we saved ourselves for the task at hand and when we had an easy stretch we kept silence out of habit, and from a sense that we were hunted. We stopped only briefly to stretch and for necessities, which did not include eating—we ate in the saddle. And we rode long past nightfall.

It would have seemed paranoid to anyone else, I supposed. But I had been a Claw and I knew what we were fleeing. The empire was at least as obsessed with finding the source of the truedark kingdom and punishing the seditious Jokka who thought of breaking contract as Hesa was with our escape, and unlike Hesa the emperor had unlimited money and entire companies of Claws to throw at the problem. He'd become fixated on the rumors of the truedark kingdom following the sentencing of Ajul, the errant Head of Rapuñal, and from what Suker had told me the searches were only getting broader and better financed. So I approved of Hesa's measures, even as the journey grew more grueling. I wondered where the eperu was leading us, though, and what we would find there.

I asked, four days into our flight, as we were falling asleep. It was lying with its back to my chest. The fit was comfortable; I was taller, its shoulders narrower.

"Not long now," it said, tired. "Two days, maybe. We'll be met."

I wrapped an arm around its chest and murmured, "All right."

But Hesa was wrong... wrong in the worst possible way. The following afternoon we heard the swift staccato of running rikka approaching us, but from the west, the direction we were heading, not the east. Before we could evade, two Jokka rode up out of a furrow and the one in the lead called out, "Gods, gods, go back, go back! They've found us, they've destroyed everything!"

"Barit?" Darsi whispered, startled. And then louder, spurring his rikka on. "Barit!"

Hesa hissed a curse and rode after him and I, I followed.

The strangers were two emodo, both spattered in pale blood and sweat and dirt. Their rikka were in similar condition and exhausted as well, panting the moment the two slowed. The male Darsi had hailed was reddish-brown beneath his dust, and there was more than desperation in his face. There was grief, too, a crazed grief. And this close to him I could smell something else: soot.

"No," the stranger cried. "No, don't stop, not for anything! There's no time!"

"Barit!" Darsi said. "What happened?"

"They found us," Barit said. "And left death behind."

Hesa reined up alongside and said sharply, "Are they following you?"

"We don't know," the second emodo said. "We think we lost them—"

I heard the pursuit first, the beating of feet on the ground. I pulled my knife from my sash. "Go, I'll catch up."

"Pathen!" Hesa exclaimed.

"Will you leave him to betray us?" Darsi cried.

"Go," I said to Hesa, ignoring him.

Hesa met my eyes so that I could see the fear in them... not of me, but for me. And then it grabbed Darsi's reins and dragged the other around, and they pelted away. Where, I didn't know; I should have thought of that. But I didn't. I waited on the back of my stolen rikka for the inevitable.

I didn't know the two Claws who rode over the fold by name, but we recognized one another. Enough for them to pull up short, surprised.

"Hold!" I said. "You're looking for the dissidents?"

"Yes?" one of them said, studying me. "You're out of uniform."

"I know," I said. "It was the only way to convince them to take me in."

That put their ears back. Then the first said, startled, "You've infiltrated their organization?"

"It was ke Suker's idea," I said. "You'd heard about House Laisira's audit?"

Now I had their attention, for my audit of House Laisira was infamous not just among het Kabbanil's citizens, but in the Claws as well. Everyone knew that one of Suker's Claws had been dogging the principals of House Laisira; most of them thought it was because they'd been suspected of the same sort of transgressions that had seen the Head of House Rapuñal enslaved. No one but Suker and my subordinate Ukeñe had known that what I'd suspected them of had been something far worse. Which was fine; their ignorance served me.

"Don't tell me he was planning this that far back!" the second emodo exclaimed.

"Why else?" I said. "I was supposed to gain their trust by telling them I'd been sent to investigate them but chose to protect them instead. And it worked. Did the rest of the operation go as planned?"

"Perfectly," the first emodo said, satisfied. "We found their settlement and razed it. Most of the rebels are in custody but a handful of them used the confusion to flee, including their leaders. We chased one of them up this way but we appear to have lost him. Unless..."

"The Jokka I'm with know the location of their final hiding place," I said. "My task is to follow them there and wait until the last of the stragglers arrive. Then I'll steal down to ke Suker and tell him where they are." They wanted to believe me, I knew, so I lifted the knife, the sickle-knife that only Claws carried. "I don't suppose either of you have a fresh binding cloth for this. Riding around without a shirt is making the handle chafe my skin."

That won them to my side. As the second handed me a spare linen, I said, "I am Pathen Ures-emodo. Tell me your names so I can give them to ke Suker... he'll want to know who met up with me to share information on the operation."

The two Claws who left me on the hill were satisfied, very well satisfied that I was who I'd said I was. I watched them go, feeling cold beneath the summer sunlight. It had been far too easy to be that person again.

Hesa was awaiting me an hour's ride back the way we'd come with the second of the strangers. When I rode over the crest of the hill I saw its shoulders ease from a distance; I spurred the rikka to a canter and joined the two of them.

"I've convinced them not to follow," I said. "But there may be other parties searching. We should make haste."

The stranger glanced at me, uncertain, but Hesa said, "Let's go," and that was enough for him. So many conflicting webs of trust: the dissidents trusted Hesa, so they trusted me. I trusted Hesa, so I trusted them. And... the empire trusted me. And that meant... what, precisely? I turned the knot of it in my head as I fell in behind the others and kept a look-out for ambush, for betrayal, for signs that we were followed. We weren't, of course. I was Suker's spy, who had dogged House Laisira to notorious effect, who had been the one to uncover Ajul Rapuñal-eperu's perfidy and see him to justice. Among the Claws my deeds were irreproachable.

The journey to the truedark hiding place took two days, two hard days climbing north into mountainous territory. On the second day we met up with Darsi and the others as well as some of the remainder of House Laisira. The further we went, the more people we found on the track, until at last we led our rikka up a narrow trail and into a tunnel, one that opened into a series of caves. There we found a handful of Jokka awaiting us, but not as many as I would have expected given the size of the settlement Hesa had said we'd be joining. The Jokka of Laisira were easy to tell apart from these strangers, for they were not dirty, bloody or streaked with ash.

At my side, Hesa was stiff until its seeking gaze found someone. "Ilushet?"

"Ke Hesa?"

From among the refugees rose a neuter, and a more distinct example of an eperu I had never seen, lean and hard and sexless in a way I suddenly realized Hesa was not. Ilushet was beautiful the way the World was beautiful, like a beast, like a mountain, like something unchangeable. That made the tear-streaks on its chin seem like desecration.

"Ilushet," Hesa said. "What happened?"

"They found us," Ilushet said softly.

We sat in a circle, six of us, in the back of the cavern: Hesa and Darsi and I and three of the truedark Jokka: Ilushet the neuter and Barit, the male who'd warned us, and his companion who'd been awaiting me with Hesa when I returned from warning off the Claws. They'd left someone in charge of directing the few remaining Jokka into the tunnels so we would be free to talk without distraction.

"First, this male... we don't know him?" Ilushet said, glancing at me.

"Pathen," Hesa said. "An ally."

"He has one of their knives," the second Jokkad observed, frowning.

"Because I was authorized to carry one," I said. "I was a Claw... but I have defected."

Silence then as the three of them stared at me.

Ilushet said to Hesa, "You trust him."

"I trust him," Hesa said.

Ilushet looked at me again. I said nothing, letting it. And then it sighed, ears flipping back. "I don't know how they found us, but they came in overwhelming force. There's nothing left of the settlement... nothing at all. They burned it all. And... Hesa..." It closed its eyes and could not continue.

"We're done," Barit said. "What you see in this cavern is it. All that's left of us. A double handful, maybe, if we're lucky. And that includes the Jokka of your House that you sent ahead. The rest of us have been taken for slaves or slain; all our supplies are destroyed or confiscated. It's over."

The silence then was complete. Hesa's trembling next to me... that was surely horror for the people it had lost from Laisira; when we'd left during the fetes, we'd thought we were the ones in danger, not the Jokka who'd already made it to the settlement. Darsi... who knew what Darsi was thinking.

I... I was not surprised. And while I could feel sympathy for their plight, I did not know these truedark Jokka. That left my mind unclouded of shock and despair, unlike the people sitting in the circle, and the only thing that mattered to me was that they were wrong. "You two. You are the leaders of this endeavor? Hesa said one of those leaders was a neuter."

"Ah," Ilushet said, fighting to come back to the conversation from its despair. "No. I am not that Jokkad. That was Thenet; Barit and I were its helpmeets but we were not the architects of this... revolution."

"And Thenet. Did they take Thenet?" I asked.

They glanced at one another and the second male spoke. "No. Thenet is on its way east with Kaduin and Seper and the avatars of the gods."

This was news to me, that there were such things. Avatars of the gods! And then I remembered a rumor of such an avatar, one that had lived in het Kabbanil, and frowned. Surely not. But how many avatars of the gods could there be? "You mean a priest?"

"No," the male said. "True avatars. The Brightness's voice, Bilil, and the Void's—"

So I was right, and stunned. "Not the Fire in the Void?" I said. "Our Fire in the Void?"

"Yes," he said, meeting my eyes. "You know him, of course. Roika's personal advisor, Keshul."

"You sent your leader away in the company of Roika's lover?" I said, disbelief making my voice rise.

"Keshul was not his lover willingly," the male said. "I know. I know Keshul. I knew him from when we both lived in het Narel. He is on our side, Claw of the empire. But he's taking Thenet to the east to meet Roika at the sea, to go with him on the ship he's been building. Because what evidence we've uncovered indicates that if there are answers for our problems, they lie somewhere north of us. Where the Jokka were born."

I stared at him, then forced myself to dismiss most of that as irrelevant to our immediate survival. "So Thenet is as good as lost. But Roika is leaving too, is that it?"

"Yes," Barit said, coming into the conversation with a curious frown.

"Then it's not over," I said. "We've had a set-back, but we can rebuild. If anything we have been given a priceless opportunity: with the emperor gone, we have a better chance of evading his Claws, depending on which minister's in charge. When I left there was unrest throughout the empire, and without Roika there the ministry might decide they need the Claws in the hets to enforce the law and maintain the peace until he returns."

"Are you serious?" Darsi asked, ears slicked to his mane. "Pathen, have you not been listening? We're as good as dead! Ten Claws or ten hundred, it hardly matters when there are so few of us! Unless we hide somewhere, and where do you propose we hide from the empire?"

"It's a good question," Ilushet said quietly. "This place of safety... we can't afford to trust it. They took most of us as prisoners. They preferred it to killing. Anyone may crumble beneath torture."

Hesa's quiver was so minute I would have missed it had I not been sitting alongside the eperu. I thought of the lovers on the public dais. "Do you have any other hiding places planned?"

Barit traded glances with Ilushet before saying, "We have scouted a few that only four of us know. But they are harder to reach than this one and not meant for long occupancy. Surviving in them... they're in the high mountains, ke emodo. There is little to eat there and few sources of water."

"Then where can we go for a more permanent solution?" Hesa asked.

"We could flee," Darsi said. "Go so far from the empire they won't bother following us."

"And how far would that be?" the second emodo said, ears flipping back. "They're stronger than we are. They're larger. They have more money. They have resources we don't. Is there any place on the continent they won't eventually spread to? And then we will have this fight all over again."

"Then we can cross the sea," Darsi said stubbornly.

"In what ship?" Hesa murmured.

"The one ship in all Ke Bakil we know can make that voyage is at the end of the eastern road," Ilushet added.

"And the emperor is on it," Barit said with a grimace.

"We can hide in the mountains, then," Darsi said.

"And die of starvation or exposure?" I said. They all looked at me. "It's a good question," I said. "Where to hide. And there's only one answer that will work, the only answer that always works: in the one place they won't look."

Hesa's ears flipped back immediately.

"We'll have to go back," I said to it, since it alone had understood me without explanation.

"Are you mad?" Darsi exclaimed. "Go back to het Kabbanil? So they can drag us away and kill us in the square outside Transactions?"

"No," I said, thinking. "Not het Kabbanil. It's too soon, we might be recognized. Het Narel. It's in the middle of the empire. It's the second largest of its cities. We'd have a chance there, not just to survive but to accomplish all our aims."

"Large enough to get lost in and central enough to work from," Hesa murmured.

"I know het Narel," the second male said, excited. "I know people in it, people who would have common cause with us. I could help."

Darsi held up his hands. "I can't believe I'm listening to this."

"Why?" the second male asked. "Because it might work?"

"Because it can't!" Darsi said. "How on the World are we going to jog into het Narel without raising suspicion? The empire has a census! The ministers know how many people are supposed to be in het Narel. They know by now that House Laisira is gone! If a House's worth of Jokka show up a few days' ride south, the couriers are going to race the wind carrying the news to the Stone Moon seat. We won't be half a week settled into our fine new property before the Claws show up to wrest us out of it again!"

"That is a valid point," Ilushet said to me. "How do you mean to explain your arrival? You were a Claw of the empire, you say. Do Jokka simply found Houses in these days anymore?"

"No," I said, quiet. "But a Jokkad might be rewarded for meritorious acts with a House, if he requested it. And if the act were important enough."

I didn't enjoy bearing the brunt of their looks, and the silence was caustic enough to raise the hair on the back of my neck.

"You're going to march back to het Kabbanil and take responsibility for the razing of Thenet's kingdom," Darsi said.

"No," I said. "I'm going to march back to het Kabbanil and convince ke Suker to let me take responsibility for the razing of Thenet's kingdom."

"This... this is madness," Darsi said, standing, every moment jerky. "Beyond it." He pointed at me. "Only a Claw of the empire would see fit to propose such a scheme. It disrespects the dead. It endangers the living. And it aggrandizes its author!"

"Do you have a better suggestion?" I asked.

"Maybe we should kill you before you betray us," Darsi said. "What's to keep you from going back to this Suker and giving us away in return for amnesty?"

"The fact that the moment I leave, you will all make for one of these other hiding places," I said. "So that if I don't return, you won't have lost anything. You can try eking out a living in the mountains until this Thenet returns, and maybe it will have a better plan."

Darsi looked at the others.

Hesa said to him, "He saved us before."

"No," Darsi said. "You saved us before, Hesa. By keeping Laisira solvent while arranging for our escape and distracting this male—this very male—from turning us in to the minister of justice. Don't let his pretty face lure you into believing his easy words."

Hesa flattened its ears but its tone remained even. "And you, Darsi. Don't let your fears blind you to hope when it comes."

"This... this isn't hope," Darsi said. "This is folly." He glanced at me, then turned his back on the others and vanished into the darkness of the cave.

"Forgive him," Hesa murmured, though it sounded tired. "He has been gravely stressed by the events leading to our escape. And this news... it's enough to disorder anyone's mind."

"It must be," I said wryly. "I can't imagine any other way Darsi would call me pretty."

Hesa snorted and set a hand on my knee.

Ilushet looked at me. "You would do this then, Claw of the empire? Go to our enemies and attempt to buy us hope?"

"I'll try," I said. "But even if I fail, I'll have given you some time to find a better place to wait out the ship's return."

Ilushet pushed itself to its feet. "Then I will ready everyone for the move."

"And I go as well," Barit said. "Abadil?"

The second emodo stood but not before saying to me, "It can work. I think it's our best chance."

"I know," I said. "And if it does, I would welcome your help."

"You'll have it," the emodo said, tapping his hand to his brow before following the other two truedark Jokka away. He alone of the others still walked with determination and squared shoulders. The others... the events of the past few days had sapped them of their will. I could hardly blame them, but I was concerned for those they led.

"Darsi's right," Hesa said softly, interrupting my thoughts. "This plan is madness." As I took its hand it sighed. "Which is why it has any chance of working. And if it does, and you manage to find us a way we could work in plain sight...."

"I have to try," I said.

"What I don't understand is... why?" Hesa asked. "Why do you have to try? This wasn't your fight until you discovered us on the first night of the fetes, and that by accident."

"However I stumbled into it, it's my fight now," I said. "And the attack has left everyone here too demoralized to act. Their leader's gone, Hesa, and the people left behind don't know what to do. My plan might be mad, but at least it's a plan."

"And if you don't come back?" it whispered.

"I'm more worried that you'll be found," I said.

It pulled me closer and we rested our heads together.

"Don't get put on the dais," it whispered.

"Don't get enslaved," I answered, as soft.

It smiled. "A fair deal, Stone Moon."

"Then see that you keep it, Laisira."

In truth, I was far less sanguine about my chances of success than I put forth. But what was left? Hiding in the mountains... it might work for a few months. But eventually the empire would chase down the stragglers or push them so far into the heights that they'd starve to death or die when winter came. If they tried hiding elsewhere, the Claws would flush them out, or harry them into irrelevance. It's hard to stage a revolution when you can't gather enough people in one place to make plans without being scattered.

But the empire wouldn't look for us in its own heart. Arrogance was a privilege it arrogated to itself. The sheer bravado it would take to plot the downfall of the Stone Moon from beneath the cover of a legitimacy it itself had granted... that was the sort of thing that saw one elevated into the ministry and ushered into the ranks of Roika's most prized advisors. It was said he admired daring plans and staunch defiance. I had thought those stories false until Abadil had said the Fire in the Void had not wanted to be the emperor's lover; that married too well with other rumors I'd heard about the sort of company the emperor preferred. Complicated relationships for a complicated man: I wondered if complexity was the inevitable result of being the sort of Jokkad who could rule the world.

The following morning I left the bedraggled remains of the truedark kingdom to lick its wounds and pack its bags. I saddled one of Laisira's borrowed rikka under a gray sky not yet warmed by the sun and pulled myself up onto its back. Ilushet was waiting to see me off with Hesa waiting in silence behind it. The truedark eperu looked up at me and said, "There is a set of ruins in the eastward quarter of het Kabbanil, the furthest east. It has a frieze with children and midena on it, half-buried at its northern edge. If you succeed, leave a token there."

"A frieze," I said. "I'll remember."

"Good luck to you then, Claw of the empire," it said, and left.

Hesa stepped to the rikka and began buckling on several soft leather bags to the saddle's rings. "Food and water," it said. "And a few other things. It should last you a week if you're spendthrift, considerably longer if you're cautious."

"Thank you," I said as it finished. And then quieter, "Take care of them while I'm gone."

"It's what I do best," it answered, its fingers lightly resting on the saddle ring near the horn. "Pathen—"

"Give me a few weeks," I said. "Then look for my token. And come with me to het Narel."

It smiled. "Of course." And then the smile faltered. "Pathen, if you fail..."

I gently unhooked its hand from the ring. "I won't fail."

It sighed and tightened its fingers around mine—callused fingers, used to work. We had been tempered all our lives, had borne the empire long enough to escape it. I had to believe we would survive.

"Het Narel," Hesa said. "We'll build anew."

I smiled and pressed its fingers to my lips. And then let go and turned the rikka down the mountain before we could make the inevitable any harder.

When I looked over my shoulder some time later, I could still see its hair: bright carmine against a gray sky, a gray world, before the rising of the sun.

I didn't ride directly to het Kabbanil. I could have; certainly I should have. If the truedark Jokka were right we didn't have time to waste. But from their hole I rode west, not south. Part of that was a paranoia so deeply trained into me it had become reflex: I knew the group was planning on moving, but I didn't know how soon, how fast, or how well they'd obscure their trail. I didn't want to risk leaving one of my own, straight back to their location.

But that explained my circuitous route, not my destination.

A little over two days later, I stood on a hill and looked down into ruin.

The Claws truly had burnt the rebel community to the ground. Had planned to; I saw places where they'd dug channels to keep the fire contained, which meant some number of them had been detailed to prevent the fire from spreading to the rest of the plains with its summer-dry grasses. Someone must have stayed to supervise the razing of the buildings also, for it to be this complete.

I rode down into it, close enough to smell the oil they'd used to keep the fires burning. It was a professional job, I thought. Someone had had this plan prepared for quite a while. I'd known Suker and his peers were hunting the rebels, but not that they'd had plans this well-realized for what to do once they'd been found.

I slid off the rikka and left it tied at the edge of what remained of the town, then went walking through it. This... this was the empire. The destruction hadn't been personal. I doubted any of the Jokka the Claws had fought had been tortured once they'd been captured. The anadi would be remanded to the residences for breeding, the eperu and emodo put to work maintaining the roads and aqueducts. They would all serve the Jokka's fight against extinction until they lived out their natural spans. What had happened here had been another day's work for the Claws, nothing more. Most of them had been as invested in the Stone Moon as I had—which is to say, only enough to care to keep it from hunting us—and that... that was what I was about to gamble my life on, and the lives of those hiding in the mountains now. That Suker was just as uninterested in the empire's success as I was. That he'd be willing to guard my back again. That the sarcasm we'd traded in moments of stress and fatigue had been clues, clues that hinted at shared sentiments.

I crouched down and dragged my fingers through the detritus. The soot clung to my fingers, and the scent of the oil too. I rubbed them together: gritty. Smelled them. Closed my eyes for a long time. Thinking... what? I couldn't tell. My mind filled with the stench of ash and burnt bone.

I'd had to come here and I didn't know why. But I had, and now I could leave.

I pulled myself back into the saddle and left the ruin of someone else's dream behind.

I rode out of the wilderness and onto the road near a wayhouse, and rather than wait for someone to stop me I dismounted and led my mount into its yard. We looked like what we were: two very tired, grimy, hard-used creatures... which was why the keeper's response to me when his shadow darkened the door was, "Gods, what happened to you!"

"Dissidents," I said. "I was detailed to chasing the stragglers from the operation recently completed on the plains." I wiped my brow, making sure my knife was in full view at my waist. "They gave a good fight."

"Not good enough," the emodo said, staring at me with wide eyes. "You look done in, ke emodo. Come in, please. I'll get you a bath and something to eat."

"I don't suppose you could also get me a uniform tunic," I said wryly. "I'd rather not present myself to ke Suker half-nude."

"Your pants have seen better days too," the keeper agreed, glancing at them, which made me feel how many days I'd been living in them. "Shall I send for a full replacement?"

"Do that and trim my mane and I'll feel like a new Jokkad," I said, laughing.

The keeper grinned too. "Come in, ke emodo. Our courier's due through in an hour. I'll have the request ready by then. Will you want to send a message ahead?"

To warn him, or to surprise him? Surprises never went well. "I'd be grateful."

That evening I sat in the wayhouse's small common room, fed, bathed and wearing some of the keeper's spare clothes. I stared out the window at the road, watching the sun flood the horizon with light clear as water, clear and crimson red. Were the others safe? I thought of Hesa, eating nothing—probably saving it for the breeders, who couldn't bear the hardships the eperu could—sitting in a dark, uncomfortable cave somewhere. Or perhaps hiking, long past the hour they could be resting and wouldn't be if Ilushet was smart.

I spent only three days in the wayhouse but I begrudged them in a way I hadn't my detour to the burn site. But the uniform arrived and the keeper fitted it to me; his hands lingered on my sides as he took the measurements but I ignored the invitation. I had lost my taste for casual relationships on joining the Claws and nothing since had changed my mind. I found the worship other Jokka directed at the authorities of the empire repugnant and the perfunctory transactions arranged between Claws unworthy of the effort.

And then there was Hesa.

I must have sighed, for the keeper looked up at me from where he was adjusting the hem of the pants. "Missing someone, ke emodo?"

I smiled. "Was it so obvious?"

"Maybe to someone who's paying attention," he said, smiling too.

He made no more overtures and showed no regret when I mounted my rikka that afternoon. I thanked him for his help and then I was away... once again dressed in the uniform of tyranny and oppression and heading back to the city I swore I wouldn't enter again until I could do so without lies. Fate's humor has a mocking touch.

Het Kabbanil had not changed in the few weeks of my absence, and yet it felt different to me. I couldn't have described the difference: the city felt both too small to hold me and too large to encompass; it was home and yet not safe; it was a part of me and I wanted no part of it. I arrived near midday and rode to the barracks, where I dismounted and went inside. I paused at the door to my office—steeling myself?—but when I looked inside everything was as I'd left it. I frowned and turned to leave, only to walk into a body slamming me back against the wall. Suker shoved the door closed with a foot and pressed into me, teeth bared. There was a knife at my collarbones. A naked one.

"Give me one reason I shouldn't kill you," he hissed.

"That perhaps I should know the reason I'm dying before you cut my throat?" I answered, ears flattened.

"As if you need me to tell you," Suker said. His anger was cold... too cold. I could see him doing it, leaning into the blade until he opened my neck. "My most dedicated worker, who spent two months investigating a House that vanished overnight and took him with them! Whose bed were you warming, Pathen? Darsi's? Or did it go back further? Have you been involved with Laisira since Jurenel?"

I made a face and said, "If you're going to impugn my honor, ke Suker, at least have the grace to pair me with someone worthy of the attention."

He hesitated, his frown growing more pronounced.

"You know better," I said. "You know me, ke emodo." I smiled crookedly. "I have better taste."

"That doesn't change facts," Suker said, studying my face.

"You don't have the facts yet," I said. "You have circumstantial evidence."

"Fairly damning circumstantial evidence," he said. "We've arrested people for less."

"Yes," I said. "We have. Haven't we."

He leaned back from my expression. Slowly, very slowly.

"Let me go, ke Suker," I said. "And let's go to your office. And talk."

"I want answers," Suker said.

"You'll have them."

He searched my eyes and I let him, and as he did I studied him in turn. The fatigue lines beneath his eyes told a harsh story when combined with his leaner-than-usual body and the naked knife, a knife that should have been wrapped while in town. He'd been investigating the truedark kingdom for weeks before I'd gone with Laisira, and I'd guessed correctly that he'd been involved with the operation. But seeing him this way made me think he'd only just gotten home himself.

He withdrew the knife as abruptly as he'd threatened me with it, tucking it into his sash. "All right," he said. "But I am not happy with you, Pathen."

"I know," I said. "Please, lead the way."

As the senior overseer charged with managing the teams of Claws that policed the southwestern corner of het Kabbanil, Suker had a larger-than-average office in the center of the barracks. He had never cared to decorate it, so it remained furnished with the basic amenities of any such office: a desk and several chairs, an expensive map drawn onto vellum and tacked to the wall, and a small shelving unit. Suker used it for storing slates and otherwise left it bare. It was one of the first things I'd noticed about him, that he had failed to personalize his office. He didn't personalize his uniform either, though as a senior he had earned the right not only to use his own sashes but also to add trim.

I remained convinced that he'd never done so because, like me, he didn't really want to be here. Watching him stalk into his office, I hoped I was right while wondering if his anger meant I was wrong.

Suker opened one of the drawers of his desk and took out a bottle and two cups. Pointing at me with a finger extended past one of them, he said, "Sit."

So I sat and watched him pour the liquor. For himself first, then me. He started drinking before he finished sitting. I took a sip myself and it ripped my tongue off.

"Not exactly a pot of keddif," I observed.

"This is not a pot of keddif conversation," Suker growled.

"Not exactly fifty-coin either," I said.

"And if I could afford fify-coin I wouldn't be wasting it on this conversation," Suker said. "This is wreck, fresh from the barracks' still."

"There's a still in the barracks?" I said, amused despite the situation. "I never heard anything about it."

"That's because it's only for senior overseers who are forced to resort to it in order to live through the disgraces of their subordinates," Suker said.

"My," I said, touching my chest. "I believe I'm bleeding."

"You should be," Suker said. He set the cup down and said, each word curt, "Do you have any idea, Pathen, what it looked like to have the entirety of House Laisira vanish after we'd put it under a special investigation?"

"I suppose it must have been... awkward," I said, studying my cup.

"Awkward!" Suker said, so angrily I flinched. I had never seen Suker angry. It wasn't pleasant. He leaned forward and said, "You could have gotten me killed, Pathen. Killed. To have a failure that extreme happen on the heels of that mess with Rapuñal? And under the same Claw!" He scrubbed his face with his hands and I noticed then that they were trembling. "Void enfold it, Pathen. I would have been executed."

"But you weren't," I said. "Why?"

"Because I lied my mouth bloody," he said. "I told them you were investigating Laisira because you suspected they were about to defect. That I'd ordered you to go with them so we could follow you."

Small wonder the Claws who'd met me on the hill had been so willing to let me ride off in "pursuit" of the stragglers. I'd told them the story they'd already heard.

And then it occurred to me that it might not have been a story. "Was it true?" I said, fighting dismay. "Did I lead you to them?"

Suker waved a tired hand, refilled his cup. I hadn't even noticed him finishing off the first serving. "No. Well, not directly. I found out where they'd be by following Ajul, not your waywards from Laisira."

"Ajul!" I exclaimed. "But he was made a slave! What could he possibly have..." And then I trailed off. Suker watched me a look both grim and satisfied as I finished, "Of course. There were others in Rapuñal. Others involved with the dissidents."

"Right," Suker said. "And once Ajul was marched north to the end of the Birthwell road they started making arrangements to free him. After that it was a matter of finding out who and asking the right questions."

"So you really were the one responsible for finding the rebels," I said, staring at him. "You helped burn the settlement down."

"Of course I did," Suker said, and drank. I watched him this time. How fast he did it. The twitch of his lower eyelid. The tremor in his wrist. When he put his cup down, he said, "What else was I supposed to do? Let them go free? The empire's enemies? My job is to take them down. I'm one of Roika's Claws."

"A job you don't want to do," I said, quiet.

"Pathen," he said, warning.

"Did you just get back?" I asked. "Have they decorated you yet? When's your public ceremony planned?"

Suker covered his face.

"Are you ready to accept the rewards and thanks of a grateful empire on the public dais they use to torture people?" I said. "A thanks you earned for enslaving and killing several hundred innocent Jokka?"

"They were the empire's enemies," Suker said, but he had not lifted his face and his voice was muffled.

"You had no choice," I said. Suker looked up then, angry. I held up my hand. "I didn't say it to start an argument. I'm saying it because it's true. Isn't it? If your choice is between your own death and someone else's, is it your fault for choosing yourself? Or the empire's, for making you choose?"

Suker sucked in a breath and let it out slowly. "You. You're one of them now."

"Suker, we were always one of them. Both of us," I said, quiet.

He looked away. Then said, "Well, it hardly matters anymore, does it? There's no 'them' left to be part of."

I said nothing as he looked inside his empty cup, shifting it to watch the dregs. When I didn't answer, he looked up at me and frowned. "There's not. Is there?"

"I need your help," I said.

He stared at me. And then shook himself and said, "No. No. I just finished telling you how much I don't want to die, Pathen. And whatever you're about to ask for is going to get me killed."

"It's less likely to get you killed than it will me," I said, and tried another sip from my cup. How Suker had put down two servings of this in a single swallow I couldn't imagine.

"It will get me killed if they trace it back to me," he said, acerbic.

"Then let us get you out," I said.

"Because Rapuñal did such a fine job of that with Ajul," Suker said.

"Because House Laisira did such a fine job of it none of us realized they were half-gone by the time they kidnapped me during the fetes," I said. "And had you not already known the location of the settlement thanks to Rapuñal's mishandling of the situation, you would never, ever have found them, Suker. Because nothing House Laisira decides to hide is going to be found."

Suker said, incredulous, "Half the House? The entire House?"

I had forgotten he didn't know that story. "Gone," I said. "Out from beneath all our noses. And they would have gotten away completely during the fete had I not accidentally opened one of their crates while loading the wagon and discovered a Jokkad hiding in it."

"But you were investigating them," Suker said. "If you saw that something might be wrong, why wouldn't someone else?"

"I only saw something worth investigating because I thought Darsi was an idiot and I couldn't imagine Jurenel choosing him for a successor," I said. "And the only reason I knew that, Suker, was because Jurenel was..." I trailed off and said, "He was a friend."

And that was true, amazingly enough. All this time and I had never realized it, since our antagonistic roles as the empire's enforcer and a Head of Household had masked the evidence. But I had liked Jurenel and enjoyed his company. And I think he had enjoyed mine.

"He was a friend," I said again, more confidently. "And I knew him well enough to realize that he would never have left Laisira to someone like Darsi. If I hadn't had that insight, Suker, I would never have known something was wrong. And at the end of the summer fetes we would have discovered House Laisira empty and never known when or where they'd gone." I met his eyes. "If you want to leave, Suker... I can get you out."

Suker sighed, rubbing one eye with the heel of his hand. "And where would I go, Pathen? And what would happen to the Claws under me? I'm their protection from the ministry. If I go, who'll make sure we don't end up doing the really heinous work?"

"Maybe we shouldn't have to do heinous work," I suggested.

"And how exactly is that going to happen?" he snapped. "I just finished burning the little "truedark kingdom" to ashes, Pathen, and what's left of it won't win a war against the Stone Moon. Is that what you want? A war?"

"No," I said. I didn't even have to think about the answer. "Too many Jokka would die and the Stone Moon would still be standing at the end of it. We can't afford an open confrontation. We couldn't, even when the settlement still stood... they must have known, or they would have tried it."

"Maybe they were planning to," Suker muttered.

"No," I said. "No, I think they knew better."

"You think?" Suker said.

"I didn't meet their leader. Thenet," I said. "That was its name." At Suker's expression, I said, "You didn't kill it. It's gone east to meet the emperor."

"What?" Suker said, stunned. "Why?"

"I don't know," I said. "Apparently there's something in the north that both of them want, and for some reason this Thenet believes the Stone Moon emperor, who's set himself against it at every turn, is going to let it go with him."

Suker frowned, but it wasn't worry. Speculation, I thought. "Interesting," he murmured. "I had heard... but you never know with rumors." He met my eyes. "So if you don't want a war, Pathen, what exactly are you planning?"

"Are you sure you want to know?" I asked.

He looked away, exasperated. "I'm drunk."

"Your fault," I offered, allowing myself the luxury of humor for the first time since our conversation began.

"Yes," he said. He pointed. "Drink. Then tell me your foolhardy plan."

I managed the entire cup under Suker's amused eye and then set it aside. "I need you to give me credit for finding the dissidents."

"Mmm-hmm," Suker said. "Why? You want the reward?"

I grinned. "You see? Not so foolhardy a plan. Go on."

"And then you will use the money to fund a rebellion?" Suker said, dividing the remainder of the bottle between our cups.

"Close," I said. "I'll take the remaining dissidents with me to establish a House in het Narel. And then we'll do what House Rapuñal did such a bad job of, except we'll do a good job of it."

"So you will bring down the empire from within," Suker said, turning his cup. His fingers were remarkably steady for the amount of liquor he'd consumed.

"Or transform it quietly," I said. "It depends on what happens with the emperor. If he never comes back..."

Suker stared at his cup. Then said, "I think this is a truedark dream you're chasing, you know. Winning against the Stone Moon." He flipped his ears back and sighed again, and I began to speak to convince him otherwise when he finished. "But I knew it was a matter of time before you made the attempt."

"What?" I said, shocked.

He chuckled. "Finally surprised you, didn't I," he said. "Please, Pathen. You never fit your uniform. I was waiting for the day you gave up trying. Most of us just wanted to go unnoticed by the Stone Moon... you never stopped resenting it for being unjust."

"Like you?" I said. The wreck improved when warm. Or at least, it was more drinkable that way.

"Not me," Suker said, tired. "I gave up a long time ago. I just wanted to work myself into a position where I could protect someone. Anyone. Myself included." He tilted his head. "Tell me something. Those rumors about you and Laisira."

"Which rumors about me and Laisira?" I said, dry.

He looked up at me. "Those rumors about you and Hesa Laisira-emodo."

I lifted a brow. "Yes?"

"Should I ask?" he said.

"Depends on how you'd feel about the answer," I said.

He leaned back and looked at me more fully, and he seemed far too sober. So I made my final gamble and said, "It wasn't in Darsi's bed. And it wasn't in mine then. It is now."

Suker dragged in a long breath and closed his eyes.

"So, ke Suker," I said, quiet. "Will you betray me to the empire's torture? Or will you help me?" I set my empty cup down and pushed it across the desk to him. "Your choice."

"My choice," he rasped.

"Your choice," I said. "Unlike the Stone Moon, I'll give you one."

He started laughing. "Void, Pathen."

I grinned and offered him my hand across the desk. He glowered at it, then clasped me, palm to palm. "Hope you like public appearances."

"Let them hang their accolades on me," I said. "I'll use them to make safety for those who need it. Us included."

That night I rode around the city's border, my rikka loping alongside the rumpled cropfields with their tall stalks of shuñe and ufi grains, only a few weeks from threshing. I could smell their malty fragrance on the early autumn wind, a scent liberally mingled with that of water and turned soil. Het Kabbanil remained the richest of Ke Bakil's settlements... in food particularly, for it had been the first het to benefit from the Stone Moon's agricultural innovations. The cones of the granaries sunk into the ground were black silhouettes among crops silvered by starlight.

No, nothing would be gained by a war. I couldn't imagine this Thenet wanting one or Ilushet and Barit would surely have mentioned it. The eperu must have hoped for a peaceful resolution of Ke Bakil's warring philosophies to have willingly ridden off to meet with its worst enemy. With Hesa's help and a good situation in het Narel, we could put together a network the eperu could use when it returned to overturn the empire without having to destroy it. And then we could keep the good the Stone Moon had done without having to spill blood for it. There were so few of us already... we couldn't afford to kill one another off. Even Roika had known that. Almost all crimes in the Stone Moon were punishable by fine or forced labor. Death was reserved for treason, and the very rare crimes of perversity.

At the furthest eastern point of the city I found the ruins with the frieze. I set my token on it: a sash of Laisira's own silk, white as blood with translucent yellow flower petals hand-painted down the last third of its length. There would be no more Laisira cloth entering the markets, but the silk they'd already sold earlier in the season was still available. Hesa would laugh at being given its House's own work, I thought... and later it could tie its hair back with the scarf. The colors would work with scarlet curls.

I pulled myself back into the saddle and looked east. Somewhere down that road the ruler of all Ke Bakil was advancing toward a meeting with his one true enemy, a meeting apparently engineered by the avatars of the gods. I didn't know that I believed in gods, but these Jokka had surely had good reason to think something useful would be accomplished by the meeting. Certainly the emperor had been dedicated to funding the voyage north. I hadn't heard a great deal about it, only enough to know it was happening. But somewhere east of us, the ultimate fate of our struggle was being decided. All that was left was for those of us left behind to put together the framework the winner would use to implement that decision... or fight it.

I clapped my heels to the rikka and rode back to the barracks. I had meetings to prepare for.

In the morning, Suker conducted me to the Stone Moon seat. I knew where it was but had never been in it; the seat was reserved for the highest level administration of the empire and the only Claws that regularly went there were attached to the ministers of government or the Head of the Claws himself.

"Let me do most of the talking," Suker said to me as we walked through the stone halls. "But don't be worried. Ke Jushet is a fair emodo. Tell him the truth you know."

The truth I knew that Suker had carefully coached me in. I said, "As much as I can."

"Good," Suker said, and stopped at an arch. "Suker Jabbin-emodo and his Claw Pathen Ures-emodo. We're expected."

"Come in."

I followed Suker into the sunlit room. There was an emodo there, a male my age wearing a Claw's uniform but with an embroidered edge twice the width of the one to which Suker was entitled. When we entered, he rose from a round table with three chairs. "Suker. I hear good things."

"Sir," Suker said. "The rebellion has been quelled. My Claw found the evidence and based on it we followed the dissidents to their settlement and razed it. We left the dead and brought the remainder back as prisoners."

Jushet, for this must be him, closed his eyes. "So at last, it's over."

"Yes, sir," Suker said, deferent in a way I'd never seen him.

"And this... this is the male responsible?" Jushet said, looking now at me with an appraising gaze.

I tapped my hand to my brow, inclining my head to go with the gesture of respect. "Ke Jushet."

"This is him," Suker agreed. "He was the one who discovered Rapuñal's connection to the dissidents. He uncovered House Laisira's plans to flee for the plains and won their trust so he could accompany them."

Jushet studied me and said, "We owe you a very great deal, Pathen Ures-emodo."

"Sir," I said, low. "I was only doing my duty."

"What you did was beyond your duty," Jushet said. "Not only that, but you have accomplished what dozens of Claws have failed to do... and in a very clever way." He glanced at Suker. "Was it your idea to have him infiltrate the rebels?"

"No," Suker said. "I approved his plans, but they were all his."

"Ke Suker implemented the raid," I said, striving to seem like the modest and loyal member of the Claws I had never been.

Jushet sat then, gesturing for us to join him. "I had had reports of Suker's involvement already," he said. "The Claws reporting to me have been fulsome in their praise of your dedication, Suker. They said you stayed long past necessity to make sure you'd chased down all the stragglers."

Suker inclined his head. "I didn't want to leave the job half-done, sir."

"Someone had mentioned the Claw who'd followed the dissidents to their hiding place," Jushet continued. "But not the depth of his involvement."

"We didn't want anyone to know," Suker said. "Lest they let the plan leak to Laisira."

Jushet said, "Brilliant." And laughed. He sounded... gods help me. He sounded like Suker had. Tired. And not happy... relieved, yes, but a relief without joy. I hadn't known what to expect of the head of all the Claws in the empire, but I'd been imagining someone a little more in love with power and cruelty. Not a Jokkad who seemed to like his work as little as we did.

I didn't make the mistake of thinking him an ally. Anyone with the amount of power he had, whether he enjoyed wielding it or not, would not be disposed toward unmaking the hierarchy in which he'd finally achieved a position of safety. But it did make me wonder if most of the Claws of the empire had become Claws for the same reason I had, and if the sort Hesa and Darsi had planned for were the exceptions.

The possibilities, if so....

Suker and Jushet were discussing the implications of the destruction of the truedark settlement. I listened without interrupting, the picture of respectful attention, until Jushet said, "So, you will allow the empire to show its gratitude, I hope. Suker? Have you any request? You know the size of the reward we set aside as incentive for accomplishing this goal. It would be reasonable to share it with your Claw if you wish... you could both retire very rich Jokka."

"I'd like to keep working, if it's well with you, ke Jushet," Suker said. "I don't know what I'd do with myself in retirement."

Jushet laughed. "I know just how that is. Work too long and you forget how to stop."

"Just so," Suker said. "I'll keep a fraction of the purse if it pleases you, sir. But my subordinate here has crazy dreams of his own, or so I hear."

"Oh?" Jushet said, turning to me with an indulgent smile. "It's not often I get to do something fun like, say, bestowing enormous gifts on dreamers. What's your pleasure, Pathen?"

"I wouldn't call it a crazy dream," I said, eyeing Suker as if we were revisiting an old joke. "But I would like to start a House, sir."

"A House!" Jushet said, leaning back with a quirk of his mouth. "Now Suker. What's so crazy about that?"

"What's crazy is that he wants to leave het Kabbanil," Suker said dryly.

"Leave the center of civilization!" Jushet said with a laugh. "All right, I'll give you that if it's true. Is he right, Pathen?"

"Het Kabbanil is the center of civilization," I said. "I'd like to try somewhere a little smaller."

"And where is this somewhere smaller you'd like to go?" Jushet asked, amused.

"Het Narel," I said.

"Het Narel!" he said, laughing again. "From the largest city on Ke Bakil to the second largest? I thought you wanted to get away from the center of civilization?"

"Well, yes," I said. "But not so far away I'm keeping neighbors with herds of rikka." I waited for Jushet to finish laughing and said, "What I really want is a fresh start, ke Jushet. If I stay in het Kabbanil every Jokkad I grew up with will have an opinion on how I should run things."

"Now that I can sympathize with," Jushet said, chuckling. "So, you want to go paint a House stone in het Narel? I think I can arrange that with Minister Thesenet. He'd be pleased to have a hero of the empire choosing his town for a home, and giving you a House would be appropriately grand in the eyes of the Jokka. We'll send you off properly with money, your choice of people—I assume you have some in mind to go with you?—and maybe even a few trophy anadi if you'd like, to establish you as one of the Stone Moon's favored."

"That would be more honor than I would ever have expected to earn," I said.

"That would be less than you deserve for what you've done," he said. "Go on, then, and start making your plans... you'll have plenty to do if you want to start combing through Transactions for a hundred-plus Jokka willing to leave with you! We'll have a ceremony to celebrate your and ke Suker's accomplishments and then you'll be on your way."

"Thank you, sir," I said, rising at the dismissal. I tapped my brow to them both and backed out of the room until I'd left it.

Suker joined me in my office later, turning the chair and straddling it. "The ceremony'll be in a week."

"Plenty of time," I said.

"Jushet was impressed with you," he continued. "But he also asked me to plant a spy in your Household." He lifted a brow. "Said if you'd been a good enough actor to fool House Laisira into taking you to their breast, you could be a good enough actor to be planning something."

"I didn't expect any less," I said. "I'm surprised he told you, actually."

"So am I," he said. "So expect two spies. Mine and Jushet's." He rose. "Make your plans, Pathen. And stay out of trouble until the ceremony."

"Trouble is the furthest thing from my mind," I said.

That night I walked to the ruins, not wanting to chance anyone spotting the rikka from a distance. I sat in the lee of the frieze and closed my eyes to wait, straining the wind for the sound of footsteps. They were quiet; that I heard them long in advance of their intention was only because I knew to seek them. I sat up and twisted to look over the edge of the tumbled stone pediment: three silhouettes, shrouded in hooded cloaks, barely visible by starlight.

"So you have succeeded," Ilushet said.

"We leave in a week," I answered, rising to my feet and dusting off my pants. "I'll need credible identities for the Jokka who'll be forming my Household."

"I can take care of that," Hesa said from behind Ilushet.

"Not all of us are going," Ilushet continued. "Some of us will stay in the wilds. We will need people who can contact Thenet when it returns and others to create new safeholds in case you fail."

"Good idea," I said.

"So it's to be het Narel?" the third Jokkad said, and that was Abadil. He stepped forth and I saw the light in his eyes even from beneath the deep shadows of the hood.

"Yes," I said. "And anything you can do to begin to ease our way there would be appreciated. You'll be in my official Household, I hope?"

"Yes," Abadil said. "I was never reported as a rebel... they assumed I drank myself to death on the plains one night. There are people who will be relieved to discover that untrue. They'll help."

"Good," I said. "Then we all have work to do. Plan for spies; there will be at least two I know of, maybe more."

"When aren't there spies," Abadil said, blowing his forelock back with the force of his sigh.

I grinned at him. "What were you in het Narel? The town pessimist?"

"The town clay-keeper," Abadil said. "So, same thing."

I laughed. "Yes, I am planning to work you hard, ke Abadil."

"Good," he said. "I'm long past ready."

Ilushet said, "Ke emodo... we go to prepare. We will meet you one more time to share the details with you before you set off. Expect us in three days."

"Very good," I said. "We have wasted enough time."

It rested the side of its hand on its chest, the neuter's respect to a male, and withdrew. Abadil's salute was far more energetic, delivered with a grin. And both of them, I saw, left me with Hesa. I wondered if Ilushet knew about us and was staring after it when Hesa said, "It doesn't, no. But I wouldn't be surprised if it suspects. Thenet loved an anadi, after all."

I looked at it and said, "No torture. I wasn't able to arrange to avoid the public dais, though."

"You broke with our deal," it said, resting its palm on my chest.

"You can punish me appropriately later," I said, amused.

"Now that there will be a later," it agreed. And added with a smile, "You bought me one of our own scarves."

"Did it please you?" I said, smiling.

"It made me laugh when little else has been able to these past weeks," Hesa said. Softer, "My House, Pathen. My House."

I drew it to me and rested my head against the rough cloth of its hood.

"Over six hundred of us," it whispered against my throat. "Six hundred, Pathen. And four hundred of them died or were enslaved. I sent them to that. I thought they would be safe. They went because I told them it would be safe."

I grasped it by the arms, ducking my head so I could look at its face. Once I had its reluctant attention, I said, "They went because they couldn't bear the Stone Moon and they were willing to take their fates into their hands. Don't rob them of their courage by taking the responsibility for their choice on your own shoulders."

"I am... I was... their pefna," Hesa said. "Their pefna and their Head of Household in everything but name. They trusted me."

"You did everything you could to ensure their safety," I said. "And you would have succeeded except for a fluke. Rapuñal gave you away."

"W-what?" Hesa said, startled. "Rapuñal? But... oh no. They tried to rescue Ajul, didn't they."

I smiled a little. "And revealed themselves to the Stone Moon, yes."

Hesa let its head fall until it bumped against my chest. And then whispered, "Over four hundred people, Pathen."

"Yes," I said. "And nothing can bring back the dead. All we can do is make their sacrifice mean something and work to save the living... and most of them are living, Hesa. Living, and imprisoned by the empire. You and I can do something for them. And we must."

It sighed, warming my skin through the vest. "Yes. Three days."

"Make sure you're on the rolls," I said.

"Don't worry," it said, smiling a little. "I'll put together a perfect fiction for your new House. I already have some ideas. And I'll enlist Abadil's help, he's a story-teller."

"Good," I said, and kissed its brow. "Go carefully."

"You also," it whispered. "Setasha."

And then it left me before I could object to the endearment... or more importantly, return it. Setasha... beloved.

I made my way back to the city, and made sure no one followed.

I had told Hesa the truth when I'd said I didn't witness the torture of the errant lovers on the punishment dais in the center of het Kabbanil. But I was familiar with that dais, for it had been less than a year since I'd served as the minister of justice's hand in the sentencing of Ajul Rapuñal-eperu. There had been other Claws in attendance to represent the omnipresence and power of the empire, but as the lucky Claw who'd caught Ajul in the act of leeching money from the Stone Moon's coffers, I'd been selected to bleed him into the jar that symbolized the life payment he now owed the Jokka for his crimes.

That day... that day remained stark in my memory. The smell of the summer storm in the sky, wet and electric; the rasp of Ajul's harsh breathing; the feel of his mane in my fist, smooth and thin and warmed from his skin. I remembered using the knife on him, and how often I'd been forced to in order to fill the jar, the hateful jar. I remembered the interminability of the ceremony and how much I'd wanted to be anywhere else.

I hadn't looked forward to mounting the platform again—the memories were gritty in my mind, like the ashes of the settlement had been to my fingers—but of the two halves of this enterprise I thought I had the easier task. How Hesa and the others planned to slip two hundred Jokka into my employ and have it look legitimate I couldn't imagine. Better to climb the dais and let Jushet and Minister Iren congratulate Suker and his subordinate before all the het than to put my hand on that part of the operation, and certainly fail.

And yet the moment I was on the dais I was plagued with a sense of vertigo. It was early autumn, not summer, and there was no blood being spilled, no prisoner, no menace beyond that implicit in everything involving the empire. But I felt as if I was there again. I was surrounded by the mask-like faces of all the Jokka who could crowd into het Kabbanil's central square, and that was many, too many to count, and all the ones nearest me... their eyes were shuttered.

I remembered coming to the public square of het Kabbanil for better reasons before the Stone Moon was established. I remembered seeing faces there, faces with visible emotion. I remembered seeing eperu and anadi among the emodo in near equal numbers. I remembered seeing children—when was the last time I'd seen a child outside the anadi residences where the Stone Moon now raised them apart from any other influence?

I remembered a city that knew itself, and people who knew one another. I remembered being proud to live there.

Looking out at the crowd, I didn't think any of the people watching did.

Minister Iren was praising us now, speaking with great eloquence of the rewards we had earned. I believe I made the proper replies. I must have, for there was no pause in the ceremony. But when my eyes were not required to be on the minister or Jushet, they rested on the Jokka witnessing the spectacle not because it was their pleasure, for they had ceased to know pleasure long ago, and not because it was their duty, for without pleasure how can one know duty? They came and they watched out of an animal sense that they needed to know their masters' moods.

I left the square wearing my own mask, one of an honored soldier of the empire. But beneath it I was reeling in a way I hadn't even after bleeding Ajul. So many people with living bodies and dead eyes. The empire had saved us from the inevitability of the mind-death with its laws... and consigned us to blighted spirits.

What I wanted most following the ceremony was to retreat to my office and shut the door on the World. Naturally I spent the next few hours besieged by visitors. A stream of Claws of every rank from the newest hire to emodo of Suker's more rarified position came by to wish me well and give me gifts.

Gifts.

I found the process appalling. It wasn't until near the end of the flow that I began to look past my revulsion and truly see their expressions. They weren't there to congratulate me for defeating the empire's enemies, but for leaving het Kabbanil to begin my own House. None of them wanted to talk about what I'd done to earn my reward, but that I'd chosen it and was escaping....

By the time I shut the door on my office to make my hours-long circuitous route to my rendezvous at the ruins, I felt the Void's own cold in the hollows of my teeth, in my bones. I'd thought the blank gazes of the witnesses at the ceremony had been horror enough without adding the scars of my fellow Claws to it.

"Your contact in Transactions is Tanden Cheriet-emodo," Hesa said. We were sitting on one of the fallen columns, bent close beneath the shadow of a partial wall; even with two of the truedark Jokka patrolling the perimeter of the ruins, we kept our voices low. "He's in Contracts. We don't have any people in Holdings or Grievances anymore so you want to stay clear of those parts of the office. The people you'll be hiring will be coming out of House Molan. There are one hundred and forty of us. The rest Abadil is going to bring to us in het Narel; he knows the emodo who used to head Transactions there and they still have people they can trust in the office. It'll be easier for us in Narel since it's less likely any of us will be recognized. Normally Transactions wouldn't know any of us either, not with the size of het Kabbanil, but because Laisira was recently "lost" the matter will be on their mind."

I glanced at the shadowed length of its nose, just visible under the hood. "And Transactions isn't going to be suspicious of House Molan losing one hundred and forty people?"

Hesa looked at me. "You didn't know their names."

"What?" I said. "Whose?"

It said, quiet, "The lovers who lost their lives on the dais."

The wind hissed over the ground, between the broken stone teeth of the ruins, as I received the weight of the words and their implications.

"So," Hesa said at last. "Of the two Houses, Molan is the one that survived... barely. It has problems keeping employees. The House shed nearly a third of its members when the majority of het Kabbanil's Great Houses refused to do business with them. Its recovery since then has been a long struggle punctuated by frequent set-backs during which it tends to lose large numbers of Jokka. And since the empire has sympathy for those who don't want to be associated with perversion, Transactions looks the other way when a group out of Molan decides they want to leave, assuming that there has been some accusation within the House that no one wants to talk about outside it."

"I'm... surprised... that no one has investigated Molan, given how badly they must want revenge for what was done to them by the Stone Moon," I murmured. "You're sure no one is going to make assumptions?"

"That Molan is in league with the dissidents?" Hesa said. It grimaced. "You have not been to House Molan, Pathen. The entire House has the air of beaten animals. Even the stones in the buildings seem to weep. Anyone who walks out of there does so convinced that the House's only wish is to once again be accepted by the people of het Kabbanil. To cease having to struggle against the prejudices created by the scandal. They do a very good job of maintaining that impression because it's true." It shook its head. "They'll help us. But I think the only reason they will is because the emperor is gone, so they believe if they're discovered they won't be as sorely punished."

I glanced at it.

"I know," Hesa said. "I know, Pathen. But this gives us our best, absolute best chance, particularly since Molan has always kept a small complement of eperu separate from the empire's labor. No one is going to question a raft of desertions from Molan."

I studied its profile, then said, "Because Molan will truly be missing one hundred and forty Jokka, won't it."

The eperu smiled a little. "If you guarantee the escape, the beaten animal will flee."

"That's well-done," I said softly, thinking of the dead lovers. "A small injustice mitigated, and we'll have played a part in it."

"Yes," Hesa said, satisfied.

"What about the rest of our people?" I asked. "One hundred and forty... how many are left?"

"The remaining Jokka of Thenet's kingdom, with Laisira now added to their number, total two hundred and thirty," Hesa said. "Of that total, two hundred will eventually come with us. And we have a plan for what we'll do as a House as well, something that will give us an excuse to run trade caravans and keep our own rikka."

"Oh?" I said.

It smiled. "It was Abadil's idea and he's very excited about it, so I'll let him explain it to you when we're on the road. He'll be one of the original draft."

"All right," I said. "It sounds like you have your end sewn up tidily. I'll take care of my end."

"You did the hard part already, convincing ke Suker to give you the House," Hesa said. "The rest of it has been logistics. Not difficult."

"Not difficult," I said, "for you."

"You see?" it said, and tapped its chest. "Pefna." It rested the flat of that hand on my chest. "And you—"

"Head of Household, apparently," I said. "I'll have to come up with a name for our little enterprise before we reach het Narel."

The eperu laughed, soft. "You'll think of something. Pathen... a few other things. So you won't be surprised."

I glanced at it and it smiled, a little lopsided smile that turned my heart. And then it drew down its hood.

"Your mane," I said, shocked.

"I don't look anything like Hesa Laisira-emodo, do I?" it said, and it didn't. The Hesa of House Laisira had had waist-length scarlet curls that, when they'd consented to be bound at all, had been messily pulled back with a single scarf, or badly imprisoned in an even messier braid. But someone had cut its mane off at the shoulder and dyed it some dark color I couldn't discern in the moonlight—brown perhaps—and the curls had relaxed into long waves.

"The others have done similar things," it said. "They're minor changes, but most people won't be examining us closely enough for more to be necessary."

"It's a good idea," I said huskily and pushed back a much tidier fall of hair from over its eye. It lifted its brows at my expression. "You had this curl," I said. "When I first met you. It kept falling over your eye and I could never stop looking at it."

Hesa closed its eyes, enjoying the caress. "I'll grow it back the right color when it's safe." And then it opened its eyes, looking up at me through its lashes. The expression would have been coy had its amusement not been so palpable. "Really? One curl?"

"Two," I admitted. "The other was near the side of your neck."

It hid its smile by ducking its head, and the movement of the mane against its face was a stranger's. It was a typical cut for an emodo and I couldn't see the Hesa I'd known in it. If I squinted, I could imagine the Hesa who'd been born male, though. I wondered how I felt about being able to see it as a male when I'd fallen in love with it as eperu: glad that I could fool myself into thinking our relationship something more normal? Unnerved that I'd lost "my" Hesa? Or confused that it mattered what body it was inhabiting?

"The other thing," it said. "We've decided for safety's sake that you should arrive in het Narel with a lover."

"A lover!" I said, my thoughts scattering. "Why?"

"Because of the rumors of impropriety that attached to you here after our investigation," it said, and lifted a hand to still my protest. "Yes, they were only rumors. That's the trouble. Rumors are impossible to disprove to people who enjoy trading them. And an emodo with a lover looks more settled to other Jokka, which can only work in our favor when we arrive."

"I can see that," I said reluctantly. "But I don't like the idea."

"You'll like it even less when I'm done with the tale," Hesa said. "We've chosen your lover for you—"

The look on its face...

"And we think the best Jokkad for the role is Darsi," Hesa finished.

I might have cramped my ears, they flattened so quickly. "You're not serious!"

"I'm afraid I am," it said.

"Gods!" I said. "There has to be some better choice! What about Abadil?"

"He's a terrible actor," Hesa said. "He only survived the Stone Moon's arrival by being known as—and actually being—a drunk, and then he stumbled out of town and fell into the truedark Jokka's arms. While drunk. He won't be able to hold with the story—unless you're willing to make it true...?"

"No," I said immediately. "Barit?"

"Barit is staying behind with Ilushet to manage the Jokka waiting in the wild," Hesa said.

"Laisira is full of emodo," I said. "All those weavers... surely one of them...?"

It lifted its brows. "None of them volunteered, Pathen. For the very good reason that they're still terrified of you."

"Terrified!" I exclaimed.

"Haven't you ever looked at your own reflection?" Hesa said. "Pathen... you move like someone trained to violence. Like someone accustomed to backing his own threats. You're already not a small Jokkad and you carry yourself like an eightclaws hunting. It's beautiful to watch but no one still right-minded is comfortable drawing too close."

I looked away and the eperu allowed me that. I didn't like thinking of myself as someone who could frighten other Jokka. In fact, I hated it.

"Someone in het Narel, then," I said, when I found my voice again.

"...and who will we be able to trust the way we trust the people we know were already committed to this path?" Hesa said. "Abadil might vouch for them but it's an unnecessary risk. Darsi's going to have to be involved with the management of the House anyway. He and I are used to working as a team. If he plays at your lover, you'll have a reason to take him with you to anything important and then I'll have two sources of information: if one of you is busy I can consult with the other. Because I will very certainly not be able to go to your meetings. Not if we want to avoid attracting attention."

"If I didn't know any better, I'd think you'd engineered this course of action to force a rapprochement between us," I said, sour.

"A rapprochement would require there have been some sort of amity in the beginning," Hesa said. "Which there never has been. Darsi can do this, Pathen. More importantly, he needs to. He feels the destruction of Laisira as much as I do. It was our plan that saw them out of het Kabbanil and from there to ruin. He needs a chance to make amends. Let him do this."

"I'll have to touch him," I said, flattening my ears.

"Only in public, and as much as is proper in public," Hesa said. It rested gentle fingers on my chin. "Pathen."

I said, "I'll consider it."

It studied my face, then said, "Consider it seriously."

"I promise," I said.

"Mmm," it said. "Keep that promise better than the one you did about the public dais."

I thought I'd suppressed my flinch but Hesa felt it through its fingertips anyway. It looked up at me. "Pathen?"

"You were there at Ajul's sentencing," I said, low. "You remember."

It hesitated. "Yes. I do."

I strove for words when I didn't have names for the feelings at conflict in me. "I never wanted to be there. The Claws on the dais with me. They didn't want to be there. The Jokka watching didn't want to be there. All of us, Hesa. All of us wished we were somewhere else. In some other life. All of us still do." I met its eyes and my voice fell to a rasp. "It's so wrong. The anger I feel. The grief. It's ruinous. I don't know what to do with it."

Hesa met my eyes without cringing, without looking away... with nothing but the metal-hardness of its convictions and its will, the very things I'd found so irresistible. It had called me a predator but I saw nothing of prey in the eperu.

"What you do," Hesa said at last, "is go with us to het Narel and begin the work that will see it changed."

That made me laugh, a rusty cough of a sound. "Pefna."

"Head of Household," it answered. And leaned up to kiss me, and it was a slow kiss and a good one, and I even forgot that it looked like a stranger with a bobbed mane that smelled like dye instead of honey.

"Three days," I said when we parted.

"Three days," it said and slipped off the column.

"Hesa," I said as it was walking away. When it stopped and looked over its shoulder at me, I said, "You weren't really afraid of me. Were you?"

"Of course I was," it said. "But fear is part of living. One heeds its counsel and then does what needs to be done anyway. Or one does nothing." It smiled. "Besides. There are things worth having on the other side of fear."

"Setasha," I said, softer. "Stay out of chains."

"And you," it said. "Stay out of trouble." It grinned. "That one I think you can manage."

The eperu left me with a chest tight with too many things: anger and grief and laughter and grief again. I like to think I heeded their counsel, but I fear I skipped that step and continued directly to doing what needed to be done.

I brought my requests to Jushet the following morning and stood before him in his office as he reviewed the slate. He'd done me the honor of asking me to deliver them personally without Suker's escort, and by that I thought that I had somehow impressed him in the short time he'd known me. I supposed if I'd really been the Claw who'd orchestrated the downfall of the rebels and had been at work on it since Ajul's trial I would have been worthy of that interest; as it was, I wasn't entirely glad of the invitation.

Jushet read the slate in silence, paused at its end, glanced up at me. Then he leaned back, slate still in his hands, to study me more carefully.

"House Molan," he said at last.

"Yes, ke Jushet," I said.

"And you're taking the entire draft," he said.

"Yes, sir," I said.

"Why?" he asked, and though his tone was more curious than interrogative I decided to err on the side of caution.

"They're good workers and they want to prove themselves," I said. "They'll never have that chance here. Not a fair one."

"It's a kindness for you to offer them that opportunity," Jushet said. When I didn't say anything, he lifted his brows. "No comment?"

"Sir," I said. "I needed a House. They needed a home. It seemed a good beginning."

"Yes," Jushet said, studying me. "Yes, it is. But a hundred and forty Jokka is small for a great House in a major city. You're sure it's enough?"

"If I need more I will speak with Minister Thesenet," I said. "Perhaps we can work out an arrangement if he and Transactions agree that there are Jokka who need a new master."

"Reasonable," Jushet said. "I'll write you a permit for an annual allotment from the pool of available children. If you can keep the House running for a year without foundering you'll be able to count on that to grow your workforce."

"Ke Jushet," I said, surprised. "You don't even know if my House will be worth sponsoring!"

"Its Head of Household is," Jushet said. "Pathen, your requests are modest and the decision to take Molan's refugees is... I won't say 'compassionate,' because we both know that kindness is not an imperial virtue. Kindness builds no roads, after all... isn't that how the proverb goes?" He smiled, showing fangs as I stared at him. "I'll say 'thoughtful' instead. Or 'efficient,' that's even better, isn't it? The empire loves efficiency."

"Efficiency does build roads," I said, still staring at him.

Jushet chuckled. "I'll send word ahead to Thesenet about the children. And there will be a deposit in het Narel's Holdings office comprising the balance of the reward which you have not spent, not with this slate. So use it in good health once you arrive."

I said, "I will, sir." And then, on instinct, "You should visit. One day when you need time to yourself."

"I might at that," Jushet said and stood, offering me his wrist. I clasped it. "I won't see you again before you leave, so go well, Pathen. You have done great things for the empire. You've earned your new life."

"I hope so," I said. "And thank you."

Over the next few days, House Molan's Jokka slipped out of het Kabbanil in the quietest hours near truedark and House Laisira's Jokka replaced them. They arrived only to be sold to me and sent off in groups down the southern road to het Narel, there to scout out a property appropriate to whatever use Abadil had concocted and prepare it for my arrival. In this way they continued until only ten of them were left to accompany me on my journey.

On that last morning, Suker was waiting for me in my office with a pot of keddif.

"Tell me the name of my spy," he said without preamble.

I pulled my chair around to the front of the desk so I could sit facing him, which I did, legs crossed at the knee and hands in a relaxed clasp on it. "Thulin Shural-emodo. You tend to like the quiet ones."

"Mmm. And Jushet's?" Suker asked.

"Two so far," I said. "One emodo, Kaliser Kaduye-emodo—very clever, choosing someone from a House I'd formerly been charged with overseeing, but maybe too clever—and an eperu, Shavi Ithera-emodo. I suppose only a head of the Claws would think to trust an eperu with spying on another Claw... but it was born emodo, so maybe there's some history there I'm not aware of." I reached over and poured for us both before offering him the cup. "I presume there will be several more when we start hiring in het Narel, but I won't know until I get there."

"Well, spit," Suker said, frowning. "To know all of them immediately you must have had a list of the Jokka you were planning to hire..." He trailed off and looked at me. And then chuckled. "House Molan—oh, very nice. I won't ask how you did it but that was a canny bit of work."

"The offer stands," I said. "If you want out, Suker."

Suker flicked his ears out, his smile rueful. "And now I believe you could manage it." He leaned back in his chair. "But no. I'll stay and do what I can here."

"If you're sure," I said. And frowned a little. "Ke Jushet seems... a fair Jokkad."

"For someone in his position?" Suker said. "I think he is. But I wouldn't gamble on it. Especially with the stakes you're playing for."

I snorted. "I've moved out of this office and you're still acting like my manager."

"Old habits leave deep grooves," Suker said. "But here's my last bit of advice. Be careful in het Narel, Pathen. If they try to take you down it'll be with an accusation of perversion. It's the only thing likely to create a big enough scandal to put paid to a hero of the empire."

And that made altogether too much sense. Enough that I thought with disgust that I'd have to take up with Darsi after all. "I have something in mind."

"Good," Suker said. "Is everything else in order?"

"I'm just waiting for the last of the hires to arrive from Transactions," I said. "Then we'll be off. But I appreciate the drink before I go."

"Keddif's not too popular in het Narel," Suker said. "I remembered you having a taste for it." He grinned. "Maybe you can arrange to import it through this House of yours."

"Maybe," I said. "I'll have to ask my keepers though. They've apparently decided what the House business is... and not told me yet."

Suker laughed. "I suppose they don't want you involved in the details."

"The details," I agreed, dryly. "Like how we'll make the money to stay solvent. Yes, indeed, a very small detail that."

"Are they all so obstreperous?" Suker asked, amused.

"Most of them," I said. "The clay-keeper in charge of this little idea more than most, though." I smiled. "I like him, though. I like them all. They'll serve."

"That's all you can ask most days," Suker said. "Jokka like you were rare." He refilled my cup as I glanced at him, startled. "You were always a pleasure to work with, Pathen. I'll miss your sarcasm, your competence, your way of doing your work without overstating the empire's power. I would have loved to have a dozen of you... the best I could do was put you in charge as fast as I could so you could maybe train your hires to your level of excellence."

"My level of excellence," I repeated, barely able to believe what I was hearing.

"Just apply yourself to what you're doing now," Suker said, "and I think you have a good chance of putting me out of work."

Recovering myself, I said, "Never fear, Suker. I'll come hire you myself before you're forced to retire yourself to a life of idleness and pleasure."

He smirked. "See that you do." He stood and offered me his hand, as Jushet had done. "Pathen. You'll be missed."

"I'll be back," I said, clasping his wrist.

He left the pot of keddif and stopped at the door, resting a hand on it. "One question."

"Yes?" I said.

"What's it like?" he asked. "Loving an eperu."

How to answer such a question? What could I say? Imagine covering a lover. A strong and smart and fierce lover who smelled of sunlight and honey. And then imagine they haven't known a sensual, loving touch for decades. Imagine being the one to give them that, and to receive it from their willing hands.

How could I put any of it in words?

"It's not the right question," I said finally.

"What is the right question, then?" Suker asked.

"What is it like," I said, "loving a Jokkad."

He met my eyes. And then said, "I look forward to my new contract with you, ke Pathen. Don't wait too long, I'm not going to be this spry forever."

I chuckled softly and drank the rest of the keddif alone before tidying my office. When I left it, I didn't look back.

My companions for the trip to het Narel were mostly familiar: Hesa, Darsi and Abadil; two of Laisira's eperu whom I'd met while packing caravans; and five of Laisira's weavers, all of them master talents. Hesa had introduced them to me months ago when I'd been investigating the House. Looking at them now as I approached, I saw the truth of the eperu's comments... they sat on their rikka with all the seeming ease of people without fear, but I could see the nervousness in their hands on the reins, in the twitch of their ears. I ignored it to pull myself onto the back of the beast they'd brought for me.

Abadil remained unchanged, his glossy dark hair tied back in a neat braid to expose the length of his face and the sheen of his skin. Hesa remained remarkably strange to me; not only because of the bob, but because it had altered its body language somehow. It seemed meek almost to the point of self-effacement.

Tawny Darsi had bleached his brown mane with streaks of gold and dark amber and trimmed it in a blatantly attractive style with a long forelock that fell coyly over his eyes and trailed up the length of his cheekbones like a lover's fingers. He was also dressed like someone who wanted to be looked at, like candy. It made me realize he'd tried to downplay his prettiness in the past. I wasn't sure whether to feel pity for him or to be suspicious that he'd been willing to play this part twice.

"Are we ready?" I asked Abadil, who was positioned with Darsi at the point of the company.

"We are, ke emodo," he said, satisfied.

"And you, my prize?" I asked Darsi.

He showed no surprise, I'll give him that. His mount sidestepped beneath him, no doubt from an abrupt change in the tension of his seat, but his face remained smooth.

"I'm looking forward to our new life," Darsi said.

"Then by all means," I said. "Let's go to it."

I led them down the street, and thankfully there was no one to see us off or stop us. Within an hour we were among the fields, following the outbound traffic on the western side of the road south. This close to het Kabbanil we were surrounded by other Jokka; not just the couriers and traders who used the road to reach other towns, but the Jokka at work in the fields and on the roads and aqueducts. It wasn't until we left the farms behind that we had stretches of road to ourselves.

"So," I said when at last we were alone. "Abadil."

"Ke emodo," Abadil said cheerfully.

"My pefna has been entirely too mysterious on the matter of my House's source of income," I said. "It has referred me to you. And now, here we are."

"So we are," Abadil said. He drew his mount up alongside mine, leaving Darsi and Hesa riding behind us and the others bringing up the rear... and there he leaned toward me, eyes burning. "What do you know about the records kept by the ancients?"

"The... what?" I said, startled by the change in subject. "I trust this is relevant?"

"Of course!" Abadil said.

"I know that we have records," I said. "But not much more than that, I fear."

"Then you don't know that many of them... are on paper," Abadil said.

"Paper!" I said, ears flicking back.

"Yes," Abadil said, satisfied with my reaction. "On paper. If we are to believe the evidence, there were far more trees in the Age of Mysteries. And their paper lasts in a way ours doesn't."

"If you're telling me we're going to make paper," I said dryly, "I hope you also have news of magical forests."

"No," Abadil said. "We don't have the trees to waste. But what we do have is grass."

"Grass," I said. "I thought grass had been tried."

"Yes," Abadil said, once again eager. "Yes, it has. And it had no longevity! But I have been talking with the weavers of Laisira about some rather enigmatic commentary in the records. The ancients regularly added the pulp of some flower to their paper, a flower that no longer grows as far as we know. But the weavers are of the opinion that it was added to keep the paper from becoming frail and yellowing, and knowing that we can use the same sorts of techniques the weavers do on fabric." He straightened. "We are going to make paper, ke emodo! Cheap paper!"

"You've tried this process?" I asked.

"Not yet," Abadil said. "But I'm confident it will work."

"So you hope we will be making cheap paper," I said dryly.

"It should work," Darsi said from behind me, surprising me. He sounded sullen. "We've discussed it amongst ourselves, and the theory's sound."

I glanced behind me at Hesa, who said, "If it does work we'll be wealthy. And we'll have a reason to ship an exclusive product to every het in the empire. We'll be able to write messages, Pathen. Cheaply. Messages that will be easy to dispose of."

"Paper burns," Abadil agreed. "Very nicely, in fact."

The possibilities were suggestive. I considered them at length while my councilors rode alongside, watching me. When I noticed their stares I said, "Are you waiting for something?"

"Your approval, obviously," Abadil said. "We can't very well go off and do something you don't support, ke emodo. You're Head of Household."

I glanced at him, surprised. "Well, there's nothing to be lost in trying. We have the money to risk. If it fails we'll still have enough to do something more conventional."

"Excellent!" Abadil crowed, and fell back to share the news with the weavers. I listened to the cadence of their conversation and heard the excitement as it passed among the other emodo: this had obviously been a decision they'd been awaiting for some time.

"You're going to have to act like it, you know," Darsi said, interrupting my thoughts.

I looked at him, but he was staring ahead. "Act like—?"

"Head of Household," Darsi said. "So get used to making decisions and giving orders, because you're going to have to look like someone who does when we get to het Narel or all this will fall apart." And with that, he reined back to join Abadil, leaving a void where his anger had been.

The silence alongside me was conspicuous. I sighed and said, "You're no doubt trying to find some diplomatic way of telling me his advice is sound, so I'll save you the trouble. I know he's right. I just wasn't expecting everyone else to take the role seriously inside the House."

"Of course they will," Hesa said. "Otherwise they won't be able to keep the play going outside it. Besides, this was your plan. Who else did you expect to be in charge?"

I watched the road crawl toward us, my eyes on the horizon. "We're making something for Thenet to use when it returns."

"And for that to happen," Hesa said. "Someone must do the making... and it will not be me. Not alone." At my look it lifted a hand and rested it on its heart. "Remember. Pefna, support... "

"Head of Household, vision," I said, chuckling. "All right. But only because you're at my side, ke eperu."

"Ke emodo," Hesa said, serene, "I wouldn't be anywhere else."

That evening we stopped at one of the wayhouses that studded the route to het Narel. I was still in uniform, so the keeper didn't ask for my token; I showed it to him anyway and asked for lodging for myself and my companions. This close to het Kabbanil the facility was already crowded, so the eperu slept outside with the rikka, much to my disquiet. The weavers and Abadil were given space on the common room floor.

I had the single room left in the wayhouse, and when I retired to it I found it already occupied.

"Pathen," Darsi said warily, sitting on one of the cots. "I hope you're not upset but we talked about it when were planning all this and Hesa and I agreed, and Abadil too, that we should make every effort—"

"Darsi," I said, because he was rambling. "Darsi. I agree. In fact, you should push the cots together."

"What?" he said, going gray at the cheek.

"The cots," I said, unbuttoning my tunic enough to loosen it. "You should push them together. It's a small building and there's no guarantee someone won't look in the room while we're sleeping. And anything seen here will get carried to the four corners of the empire with all the travelers passing through."

I turned away from him to pull the tunic over my head... and give him time to compose himself, since he obviously needed it. I was starting on my shirt when he said, his voice cracking, "What are you doing?"

"Undressing?" I said. "Keep your voice down, please. Do you sleep in the clothes you spent all day riding in? I don't."

"Pathen," Darsi began.

"Darsi," I said, tired. "I am not going to touch you any more than is necessary to convince someone looking in on us that we're together. So move the cots together and get undressed and stop worrying about me pushing up your tail."

That made him blanch and slick his ears back, so I thought the anger might succeed in whelming the fear. I ignored him to finish stripping down to my hip-wrap, and eventually he rose and pushed the cots together and I heard the rustle of his clothing as it left his body. I tried not to clench my teeth at the sound; the last thing I wanted to do was get in bed with Darsi. But to protect Hesa from the pedestal and to keep our new venture virtuously clean of scandal, I would do far worse things. When I judged from the noises behind me that Darsi had climbed into our makeshift bed I quenched the lamp and joined him.

"Do you have to be behind me?" he hissed.

"I'm taller than you," I said. "It will make it more obvious we're embracing."

"And do we really have to be doing that?" he asked. "There's a blanket on us."

"If I don't put this arm over you," I said, "one of us will fall off. It's not a very comfortable bed, you'll note."

"Pathen—"

"Darsi," I hissed through my teeth, ruffling his mane. He stiffened in my arms and I could feel, suddenly and painfully, just how anxious he was. I gentled my voice as much as I could and said, "Darsi. It's just for the road. Once we reach het Narel we'll keep separate beds. Which you'll observe we both obviously desire."

"Right," he murmured, but his shoulders were still tight.

I stared at them, trying not to feel the tremor in his body against mine, and failed completely. "And you really expected to lie with me when I first came to Laisira? Were you planning to mask your revulsion?"

"No," he said, subdued. "I was expecting you to find it enjoyable."

"And how long did you plan on lifting your tail for me despite that revulsion?" I asked. "How long before you flew apart from the misery?"

"As long as it took," Darsi mumbled. "I thought... if it got harder for me, maybe that would excite you more. I know someone who was broken by a Claw that way... the more their trysting hurt, the more desperate it made him, the more it seemed to... distract... his abuser."

I said nothing for so long that Darsi eventually looked over his shoulder at me. I could just see the gleam of his eye in the dark. "You're not like that, though."

"No," I said, finding my voice. And then, fighting my outrage, "Did you really have to wait until you could feel the lack of my reaction against your body before you believed me?"

"Yes," Darsi said. "You're a predator, Pathen. Predators like to overpower their prey. They like fear. They like the hunt."

"I," I said from between clenched teeth, "am not an animal."

"You did a good job of fooling everyone," Darsi said.

If he'd only known... a real predator would have shoved him into the cot and choked him until he'd taken the words back, maybe raped him in the bargain. I shook from the effort of not repaying his cruelty with violence, but I mastered the urge. That was the difference between us, perhaps. He used his weapons carelessly, thinking them only words. He wounded with them with impunity and expected to go unpunished for it. But I... I knew the myriad ways I could destroy someone and had trained myself not to do so without cause, without knowledge, without an understanding that there would be consequences.

Like the prey he'd called himself, he had stilled himself alongside me, the utter stillness of a creature hoping its hunter would miss it. I gave him that much credit: he'd known he was in danger.

"I would suggest," I said when I'd fought my anger down at last, "that you cease to bait me, Darsi Laisira-emodo."

"Or what?" he asked.

"Or I will make you ride pillion with me," I said. "And insist you wrap your arms lovingly around my waist all the way to het Narel. And sing me love songs. And feed me cakes. I believe I am a good enough rider to eat cake off your fingers without guiding the rikka off the road."

For a heartbeat he remained stiff in front of me. And then he blurted out a shocked laugh. I gave him just enough breath for that and then set my fingers on his ribs and tickled; that I didn't let up on until he was gasping. When he was making inarticulate begging noises I stopped and drew the blanket back over him.

"Wh-why," he panted.

"Because you were being an idiot," I said. "And it was irritating me. We have a job to do here, Darsi. I don't care if you like me but the work has to be done and for some gods-pissed-upon reason the lot of you have decided that we're the ones who have to do it. And I can't do my part with you sulking at me—"

"—I wasn't sulking," Darsi objected.

"—or having petty tantrums," I finished. "Damn it, Darsi! At very least admit what you're doing."

"Fine," he said. "I still resent you for what you put us through when Jurenel died. I'm not done with that yet. I don't know if I'll ever be done with it."

"All right," I said. "I can work with that." And settled down with my arm over his waist, on top of the blankets where it could be seen.

"All right?" Darsi asked, incredulous. "That's it?"

"That's it," I said. "Except for sleeping. Which I suggest you do as well."

He sighed and settled down and I thought I had silenced him—thank the gods—but he had to give vent to one last act of rebellion. "Pathen... 'my prize'? Really?"

"Yes," I said against his hair. "Do your best to live up to it."

Darsi never did quite conquer his fear of me. I slept with my nose behind his ear where the proof of it was unavoidable; I could smell it off his skin. It made the nights very uncomfortable—how could anyone relax knowing they were terrifying the person next to them? But other than that, the ride to het Narel was almost... enjoyable. Abadil told us about the town on the way there, as much of it as he remembered from after the arrival of the Stone Moon. He discussed the time before it also, but he refused any questions about the process that saw het Narel engulfed. When I pressed him, he said only, "I would tell you if I could, ke emodo... but it's not mine to tell. There's a lot of pain there too intimately bound up in it all."

"I thought you were a historian," I said, for by then I felt I could tease him without him taking it amiss.

"I am," Abadil said. "But part of being a historian is knowing what stories are ready to be told."

I liked Abadil. He liked me too, and his ease in my company did a great deal to soothe me after spending the nights trying not to notice Darsi's discomfort. I even got used to my "new" pefna, for Hesa kept to the false reserve so different from its real personality. We were never alone, which chafed, but at least the eperu was near. The time I'd spent parted from it after the razing of the settlement had felt interminable.

On the last morning of our journey, we set off at a pace slow enough to conserve the rikka for we did not plan to stop before we'd reached het Narel. The weather was cool in the shadows, warm in the welling sunlight, and we were all—dare I say it—in good spirits.

I had left the most difficult of my questions for this day. "Abadil."

"Ke emodo," Abadil said, affable.

"Tell me now about Thesenet."

"Ahhhh," Abadil said, and trailed off. I'd gotten used to these unexpected silences of Abadil's. His thoughts distracted him, as so often happened with Jokka who'd spent more time among the quiet of letters than among other people. "Thesenet. I think... you might like him."

"Pardon me?" I said.

"Our first minister," Abadil continued, more to himself than to us. "Our first minister was a tyrant. Petty, cruel... you could have plucked him out of a bad clay drama. Nelet, that was. Nelet would have given you problems, Pathen. But Thesenet... Thesenet only wants to do right by the het, if his actions are any indication. A practical sort, and very focused on the well-being of the Jokka in his care. There's some value to being both a large city and not the host to the Stone Moon seat. There's no direct oversight from the emperor and all his ministers, but the het is also too large for its minister to become too personally involved in anything." He pursed his lips, then smiled crookedly. "Yes, though it seems ridiculous, I'd have to say... if you take care with him, you might make an ally of Thesenet. He'll already be flattered that you chose het Narel to settle in."

"I see," I murmured.

"What happened to Nelet?" Hesa asked.

"Oh, Nelet... Nelet was executed," Abadil said. "By the emperor, at his lover's request."

Hesa glanced at him. So did I.

"Part of the story," he said, flushing at the attention. "The one that's not mine to tell. Suffice to say Nelet made mistakes." He grinned. "One of the reasons Thesenet's been so dedicated to not making them."

"This coyness of yours, Abadil," I said, and this time I wasn't teasing. "If the information you're withholding endangers us in any way—"

"No," Abadil said, very sober. "I vow it, ke Pathen. I'll tell you before I let anything happen to us." He drew in a breath. "But het Narel has a lot of history with the Stone Moon. Thenet lived there for a while. So did Roika. And Keshul—the Fire in the Void—him too. When I tell you it's not my story to tell, it's as much because I don't know it all as for any other cause. I'm afraid I'll get some crucial detail wrong."

"All three of them?" I said, startled.

"And ke Dlane too," Abadil said softly. "Though you have never met Dlane, and few people will speak of her anymore."

"Thenet's beloved, the anadi who died," Hesa said.

"Yes," Abadil said.

Darsi sounded reluctant as he asked, "Why do they not speak of her?"

"Because," Abadil said. "Thenet won't."

We stopped at noon to stretch our legs on the side of the road. Abadil and the weavers took the opportunity to eat; Hesa remained at the road's edge, staring into the distance.

And I... I grasped my "prize" by the arm and led him off beneath the shade of a stunted black yew tree, out of easy hearing of the others.

"Pathen?" he hissed.

"Darsi," I said, low. "We need to enter het Narel as lovers—"

"—I know that!"

"Not," I finished, "as a Claw and his cowed pet. I know you're no actor, but I need you, need you to do this. No meekness. No flinching. You can be demure if you want, but not anxious."

"Why does it matter what kind of partners we look like?" Darsi asked. But I was glad he asked, no matter how suspiciously. It proved he was thinking instead of reacting.

"Because if Abadil is right, if the minister of het Narel can be cultivated, then our freedom to act will be significantly increased," I said. "So I mean to read his reaction to our relationship. He is expecting a triumphant Claw of the empire, one who finagled his way into the hearts of others and then used their trust to destroy them. By all rights you should be my cowed pet. If you don't act that way we might surprise him into revealing how he feels about any of it."

"And if he's pleased to see you're not cold," Darsi said, reluctant, "then we'll know that at very least he isn't attracted to cruelty."

"Right," I said. "So. Can you do this?"

"Pathen," he said, ears splaying.

"I can tickle you again if it will help."

That made him laugh. "Pathen!"

"Darsi." I took a chance and rested my hands lightly on his arms. "Darsi, I've often thought you were useless at running a House, I won't hide that from you. But we're not Darsi Laisira-emodo, false Head of Household, and Claw Pathen of the Stone Moon. We're two rebels now, united by a common cause. I know you volunteered for this. But if you feel that you can't play this part, I won't let Hesa force you. What we're doing is too important."

"But where will we get our safety from scandal if I back down?" Darsi said, but he hadn't shaken my hands off yet.

"I may try to romance the minister instead," I said, and meant it.

His pupils dilated. "Are you mad?"

"No," I said, amused. "Determined, perhaps. Mad, not as much. At least, I hope not."

"Arrogant, though!" Darsi said with a scowl. "Worse than a Stone Moon emperor. Or a god."

"I hope not," I said again. And shook him lightly. Just a little. "So. Yes? No?"

He looked away, grimacing. "Much as I'd like to see you try to seduce someone and maybe have your tail handed to you... I still think our plan's the safest plan." He sighed. "So. No cowed pet. I can do that."

"Tickling required?" I asked.

He wrinkled his nose. "Stop trying to make me laugh."

"Is it working?" I asked with a grin.

And it did. I let him return to the others and watched him go, smiling to see the fear gone from his gait... for now, at least.

Hesa stepped up beside me and murmured, "How did you do that?" When I glanced at the eperu, it said, "While I wouldn't say he hates you, precisely, his feelings about you are... rather strong. And not in your favor."

Abadil was waving to us from the back of the rikka; the rest of our party was already mounted. As we moved to join them, I said, "I don't know how I did it, beloved. I just knew it had to be done." And as I pulled myself into the saddle, I finished, dry, "And don't worry. I don't think it's permanent."

Hesa laughed under its breath. "There's always a season or two between planting and reaping," it said.

"So!" Abadil said as we urged our mounts back onto the road. "Our last few hours before our adventure in het Narel! How shall we spend them?"

"I don't know," I said. "Can you sing, Abadil?"

"Of course!" he said, beatifically. "Though you may regret my efforts."

"How bad could you be?" Darsi asked, fascinated.

"Since you asked..."

When Abadil had finished scouring our ears we all took Darsi to task for inspiring the episode and he mournfully agreed he had earned every moment of our opprobrium. Abadil cackled at our expressions, and that handily demonstrated the humor in it to the rest of us: we ended up laughing too. Nevertheless, we decided it the better part of wisdom to move on to rhyming games to pass the remaining time.

That is how we came to enter het Narel in the early autumn afternoon, with the coppery light on our shoulders and laughter in our mouths. That was Minister Thesenet's first impression of us, and to this day I look back on that moment and give thanks for everything it helped shaped afterward.